How to analyze fiction

1,034 121 16MB

English Pages 0 [116]

Report DMCA / Copyright

DOWNLOAD FILE

Polecaj historie

How to analyze fiction

  • Commentary
  • Digitized by the Internet Archive
Citation preview

^m^brigCSSSSk?*™ for Students of Literature 31111009689074

ANALYZE

FICTION Step-by-step instructions and examples prepare you for analytical discussions, papers, and exams. Elements of Plot Judging Characters Style and Tone Structure and Technique Possible Points of View Functions of Setting Meaning of Theme

APPENDIX: The Short Story vs. The Novel

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2011

http://www.archive.org/details/howtoanalyzefictOOkenn

ENTER

3 1111 00968 9074

How

Tdlxe i

DATE DUE MOV

w Zl) Uitfc

m

i-

MR APR M4

r

.

1 5 1OT Q

j 1

1991

B

S FP 2 " 1991

(MM » 799?

«199i OEC 2

3199 f

zw

«

1986 OCT 2 5



nrr 05

2000"

m

m

MONARCH PRESS

Ik

Copyright

©

1966 by

SIMON & SCHUSTER All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by

MONARCH PRESS a

Simon

&

Schuster division of

Gulf & Western Corporation

Simon & Schuster Building 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY. 10020

MONARCH PRESS and colophon are &

trademarks of Simon

Schuster, registered in the U.S. Patent

Office.

Standard Book Number: 0-671-18746-5 Printed in the United States of America

and Trademark

CONTENTS one

PLOT

8

The elements of choice and plot;

the laws

of plot;

subject; the nature of

major examples from

Austen and Hawthorne

two

CHARACTER

24

Standards by which to judge fictional character; simple and complex characters; methods of character portrayal

three

SETTING Types of

38 settings; the

elements of setting;

functions of setting

four

POINT OF VIEW

46

Defining point of view; possible points of view; point of view and meaning

five

STYLE AND TONE The nature of

style:

57 diction,

imagery,

from

defining tone; major examples

syntax;

Swift, Poe,

Thackeray, Melville, and O'Connor

six

STRUCTURE AND TECHNIQUE panorama and scene, dialogue; major examples from Hawthorne and Swift

Description;

narrative technique:

74

seven

THEME

88

The meaning of theme; discovering theme; theme in fiction;

major examples from

Hawthorne

eight

APPENDIX: THE SHORT STORY

103

AND THE NOVEL The

nine

structural differences

between the two forms

FURTHER READING A

bibliography of the most important and useful critical

works on

fiction

107

PREFACE The

of this book is word "analyze"

title

How

to

Analyze Fiction.

presume

I

immediately evoke hostile responses in many of my readers. "Why must we always analyze everything?" thousands of students have asked hundreds of teachers. "Why can't we just enjoy what we read?" the

that

It's

will

Enjoyment

what most of And, for all the occasional "mere entertainment," it would be very hard

a fair question.

is,

quite properly,

us seek in our reading of fiction. sneers directed at

make

indeed to

a convincing case for the superiority of unen-

tertaining fiction.

We may We

and not analysis, is our what we read. In fact, we want to get the fullest possible measure of enjoyment out of every story that we read. At least, it is on this assumption that this book

end.

is

agree, then, that enjoyment,

want

to enjoy

written.

This brings us back to the subject of analysis. For sition

that

analysis,

it

is

my

po-

and rightly underenjoyment of fiction.

properly understood

taken, contributes essentially to the full

Properly understood. For what do we mean by analysis? According to many students, to analyze is "to tear things to pieces." Well, that sounds unpleasant enough. In fact, it's a rather violent way to describe what goes on in most classrooms. But analysis is not quite tearing things to pieces. Or, at least, it's a good deal more than that.

To analyze make it up

a literary

work

is

to identify the separate parts that

corresponds roughly to the notion of tearing it to pieces), to determine the relationships among the parts, and to discover the relation of the parts to the whole. If some (this

analyses do seem to leave the

work torn

to pieces, figuratively

HOW

6

TO ANALYZE FICTION

means simply that they are not complete analyThe end of the analysis is always the understanding of literary work as a unified and complex whole.

speaking, this ses.

the

And

must be not only properly understood but

analysis

also

can often be drudgery, whether the analysis be of a literary work, a chemical compound, or a competitive sport. And the analysis of a literary work has still more to be said against it: it is bound to be artificial. The "parts" we discern in our analyses exist, after all, rather in the mind of the reader than in the works themselves. To illustrate this point, let's consider a sentence we might find in a work of fiction: "The windows of the old house rattled as John slammed the door." To what "part" of the story might such a sentence belong? rightly undertaken. Analysis itself

Well, since the sentence to think of

John

is

it

tells

of an event,

as a matter of plot.

the kind of person

who

we might be

But surely

slams doors

inclined

be told that to learn some-

to

is

Look again. The door slammed by John is in an old house with windows that rattle. Setting? Which is it? The answer, of course, is all three. And, in the context of a complete story, this same senthing about John.

tence

may have

Not

plot,

several further functions in addition to those

already suggested.

The house,

sort of symbolic value.

examined

as

then, but character.

And

for instance, might have

an example of the author's

Analysis, then,

may

be drudgery and

should we indulge

in

Any

that practice in

athlete

he knows,

dummy

is

knows too,

that

it

some

of course the sentence might be

is

style.

certainly artificial.

Why

at all?

practice

is

any sport often

is

drudgery.

artificial.

not the same as tackling an opponent

not the same as tackling an opponent

who

is

And

Tackling



a

certainly

trying to disap-

pear behind a massive wall of blockers in a championship game with the score 7-7 in the closing minutes of the last quarter. But he knows that the purpose of the practice session is to develop his skills, his co-ordination, and his reflexes so that he

can make the tackle without stopping to think about is,

without analyzing what he's doing.

it



that

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

Literary analysis of the sort this

may be compared

book

invites

to practice in a sport.

By

you

7 to undertake

analysis,

you

will

develop intellectual and emotional skills, co-ordination, and reflexes to the point where you'll be able to use them without stopping to think of what you're doing. You'll become aware of many of the things that go on in fiction, in the hope that eventually this awareness will operate as you read, rather than in a classroom post-mortem. What the inexperienced reader discovers by painful analysis, the experienced reader grasps, so it seems, by instinct. But in most cases the "instinct" has been developed by experience in analysis. Analysis rightly undertaken, then,

is

analysis undertaken for

making analysis unnecessary. Your goal should be to develop, by the exercise of analysis, your skills as a reader so that eventually you may move on from the work of analyzing fiction to the joy of experiencing it. the

ultimate purpose

of

The present book makes no claims tent or format.

I

have

felt that

clearest possible concise fiction,

to originality, either in con-

what the reader wants

is

the

exposition of established notions of

rather than original but possibly erratic theories.

CHAPTER

1

PLOT CHOICE

AND

CHOICE: The act of writing, whether one is complex three-volume novel or a personal letter to a close friend, consists of a series of choices. To see just what FICTION

writing a

this

means,

let's

consider the simpler form, the personal

letter,

first.

CHOICE IN A PERSONAL LETTER: In writing a personal letter, we begin making choices at the very beginning at the



salutation

as

it

is

usually

called.

We

Dear what? Analyzing our relationship

begin

"Dear

."

to the intended recipi-

ent of the letter permits us to choose the saluation properly. is to a personal friend, we choose to address him name, perhaps even by a nickname. A more distant

If

the letter

by

his first

acquaintance

calls for a

more formal

salutation, a

more

inti-

mate one may suggest a more intimate salutation. On the one hand, "Dear Mr. Brown, " on the other, "Darling." The choice is

ours.

Of course, the choice is not entirely free. We are limited to some extent by custom, to some extent by what we understand as the expectations of the person

who

is

to read the letter.

we must

decide what custom applies to the particular situation in which we find ourselves. We must decide to what extent we are going to be bound by custom. And we must Still,

decide just what are the expectations of the person to whom we address ourselves. And we may have to decide whether is some good reason to disappoint those expectations. For instance, she may expect me to address her as "Darling," since I normally do, but I want her to know at once that I'm displeased with her: "Dear Mary."

there

8

HOW Many

TO ANALYZE FICTION

9

we make in these situations are, of course, Most often, we instinctively choose the and make similarly correct choices right down

of the choices

not conscious choices. right salutation

("Sincerely"? "Love"?). But conscious or them are significant. All of them contribute to the meaning we communicate to the reader. to the closing

all

of

CHOICE

IN

WRITING A STORY:

The

writer of fiction, like the

writer of a letter, faces a series of choices.

Some

he makes are fully conscious; some are not. But cant;

all

contribute to

making

not, total

the story

what

it

of the choices all is

are signifi-

and not an-

other thing. Further,

writer of fiction

the

must recognize

that

there

are

Conventions, in some cases established by the practice of writers over many centuries, have led to the development of expectations on the part of readers. The writer must take these conventions and expectations into account. But he must decide for himself what conventions are appropriate to what he is doing. He must decide limits

to

to the choices available to him.

what extent he

is

willing to follow convention.

He must

decide which of the reader's expectations are relevant to the sort of story tified

in

he

is

violating

writing.

the

And

reader's

he

may

decide that he

expectations for the

is

jus-

sake of

some higher purpose.

CHOICE

AND

THE READER: What have the choices facing do with the experience of the reader of fiction? I suggest that the best way to develop a full awareness of what's going on in any story you may read is to develop an awareness of the choices the author has made, the choices that have given the writer to

the story its distinctive shape. This includes, of course, an awareness of the alternatives open to the author. Your purpose is not to determine why the author made these choices (often he's not sure himself), but rather to discover how the author's choices have combined to produce the unified story you have

before you.

THE CHOICE OF SUBJECT: series of choices as

It is

natural to think of the author's

beginning with the choice of subject. In fact, however, the writer may not begin by thinking in terms of sub-

HOW

10

TO ANALYZE FICTION

A chance remark, a fleeting insight into character, image any of these may be the true origin of a story. Such matters are, however, more relevant to the author's biography or to a study of the creative process than to the analysis of a particular story. If the writer does not always begin with a subject, the reader is inclined to begin by wondering what the story is about which is one way of saying what the subject is. And this is surely a question (again, perhaps not consciously asked) that the writer must answer early in the jcct at all.



a striking



process of writing his story.

But of course the writer, unlike the reader, does not merely it, although the choice may be

discover his subject; he chooses so instinctively

made

as to

seem almost a discovery.

SUBJECT THE

MEANING OF

SUBJECT:

Words

like "subject," "content,"

"form," and "style" are so freely used in discussions of literature that we must always be sure of what we mean by them. Often ''subject" and "content" are treated as synonyms. In this book, they are not. "Content" as I use the word means what the work contains. Content is essentially identical with form. We may sometimes find it desirable, for purposes of discussion, to act as though there were a distinction between the

two, but

we should do

habit to get into) the distinction

is

this as seldom as possible (for it's a bad and we should always remain aware that even more artificial than most literary dis-

tinctions.

Subject, on the other hand, is not what the work contains but what the work refers to. Unlike the content, the subject exists before the story is written and would exist if the story were never written. For instance, we might consider the problems of a certain kind of middle-class woman as the subject of Gustave Flaubert's famous novel Madame Bovary (I don't suggest this ject),

is

the only possible formulation of that novel's sub-

while the content of the novel

is

something

infinitely

more complex.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SUBJECT:

It

should be clear from

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

11

what has been said that no subject, as we are using the term, is good or bad in itself. The problems of middle-class women existed before Flaubert chose them as his subject. These problems could provide subjects for an infinite number of novels, some good, some bad, some mediocre. If Madame Bovary is a superior novel, then, it is not because of its subject.

SUBJECT AND THE READER: Yet it is undeniable that some readers, while perhaps agreeing that you can't tell a book by its cover, do tend to select books by their subjects. One and probably a very nice lady at that, likes to read about young love but won't read anything on the subject of war, while another reader's tastes may be exactly the reverse of this. I once recommended a movie to a friend, one of the most intelligent men I know, and he replied he didn't think he'd see it because he didn't like movies about doctors. I pointed out to my friend, an ardent admirer of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, that this was rather like saying that one doesn't like novels about white whales, but he remained unconvinced. reader,

stories

This kind of prejudice

cumbs

to

it

is

is

unfortunate.

The reader who sucmany of the

needlessly cutting himself off from

pleasures that good literature (and good movies) can give. is

It

wisest to grant the writer his choice of subject and look to

see

how

subject

is

transformed into content. That

is,

judge the

story, not the subject.

SUBJECT

AND

THE WRITER: But if no subject is good or bad may be good or bad for a particular writer. We may assume that every writer will find there are some subjects he simply cannot transform into content, some subjects he is incapable of turning into stories. He will find, on the other hand, that some subjects are particularly suited to his talents and temperament. Indeed, some writers (D. H. Lawrence, for one) seem to find a particularly congenial subject in itself, a subject

early in their careers

mature. to

Some

writers,

have only one

real

and return to it again and again as they even some very good ones, may be felt subject in the entire body of their work.

Whether a writer has one subject or many, he must choose

HOW

12

TO ANALYZE FICTION

those subjects to which he tistic



response

is

capable of giving the

and, as regards his subject, this

is

fullest arall

we may

legitimately ask.

THE EXAMPLE OF JANE AUSTEN:

The English novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), author of such famous works as Pride and Prejudice and Emma, is an excellent example of a writer wise in choice of subject. Miss Austen lived in one of the most eventful periods of British history, but her own life was rather uneventful. As a novelist, she drew not on the Napoleonic wars, about which she was probably not very well informed and of which she of course had no firsthand knowledge, but on the quiet provincial life with which she was entirely familiar. To those for whom "subjects" have some sort of intrinsic \alue, Miss Austen's choice may seem foolish. Yet in choosing, not the big subject with little personal meaning for her, but the little subject to which her complex, ironic personality fully responded, Jane Austen was making the only choice a genuine novelist could make. And the proof that her choice was wise is the greatness of the novels that choice led to. Today, Jane Austen is universally recognized as one of the greatest (some would say the greatest) of English

FROM SUBJECT TO STORY: subject, then,

The question content, that

is is is,

To

novelists.

judge a work of fiction by

as ill-advised as to judge a

THE READER'S EXPECTATIONS: work

At

this

point

it

its

cover. into

might be

we commonly expect

of

of fiction. In specific details, the nature of these expec-

tations will differ

one element

work

its

how the author transforms his subject how he makes a story out of a subject.

advisable to remind ourselves of what a

book by

from reader

common

of fiction.

That

to reader.

Yet we

will surely find

to every reader's expectations before a is,

the expectation that the

work

will tell

a story.

WHAT we a

IS

A STORY?:

say that fiction

work

But what precisely do we mean when

tells

a story?

At

the

minimum, we mean

that

of fiction deals with events that occur in temporal se-



quence that for example,

is,

one

after another.

The

will include his birth, his

story of a man's life, growing up, his mar-

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

13

riage, his growing old, his death. Obviously, these events occur over a period of time. More commonly, of course, a story will deal with a more limited series of events. young man meets a girl, he is attracted to her, he courts her, he proposes marriage, she accepts, they quarrel, they separate, they patch up

A

their

differences,

they marry.

The temporal element

is

still

clear.

Yet any experienced reader of it

than

this.

A

fiction

knows

there

is

more

to

story deals with events that occur in temporal

sequence, to be sure, but a slavish adherence to temporal sequence is rare in serious fiction. Consider, for example, F.

The Great Gatsby. In this famous work, Gatsby as a boy planning to "study needed inventions" and of the mature Gatsby shot to death in his swimming pool. Now Gatsby was obviously a small boy before he was a man. Yet Fitzgerald does not tell us directly of Gatsby the boy until after Gatsby's death. The novel departs, in this and in other instances, from strict temporal sequence. Scott Fitzgerald's novel

we

are told of

We may

say in fact that every story involves

some

sort of de-

temporal sequence. At the very least, we must be prepared for gaps in the sequence. Structurally, Ernest Hemingway's "The Killers" is an unusually straightforward story. There is none of the kind of juggling with time we have noted in The Great Gatsby. Yet even Hemingway, while keeping his story moving forward in time, selects some moments for inclusion while rejecting others. What is presented happens in temporal sequence, but not everything is presented. There parture from

strict

are gaps.

PLOT THE NATURE OF PLOT: the simple setting

down

What

this

seems to imply

of events in temporal sequence

is is

that

not

main concern of the writer of fiction. Other things are more important to him. It is in arranging the events of his story according to demands other than the purely temporal

the

that the author creates plot.

In

other words, plot reveals events to us, not only in their

HOW

14

TO ANALYZE FICTION

temporal, but also in their causal relationships. Plot makes us

aware of events not merely as elements in a temporal series but also as an intricate pattern of cause and effect. Nick's decision, at the end of "The Killers," to leave the town in which the story is set is one event in a series. But it is also the effect of the events that have preceded it, the implications of those events, and the impact of events and implications on Nick. Gatsby's death and dismal funeral in Fitzgerald's novel must be seen as the final effects of a causal chain that can be traced all the way back to his boyhood. And, as Fitzgerald's novel indicates, the writer of fiction is willing to manipulate temporal relationships boldly for the sake of revealing with the greatest

amount

of force the causal relationships that are his

principal concern.

By plot in fiction, then, we mean not simply the events recounted in the story but the author's arrangement of those events according to their causal relationships. THE STRUCTURE OF PLOT: To recognize this much, however, is only a beginning. We must consider in more specific terms the form this "arrangement" we call plot is likely to take. For, underlying the evident diversity of

fiction,

we may

discern cer-

tain recurring patterns.

We may

seem

to be belaboring the obvious

discernible pattern

is

middle, and end. But

if

we

note that one

the division of the story into beginning,

we remind

ourselves that a story is a crude division may come to seem more significant. The writer chooses to begin his story at one point and end it at another. And, as we have seen, he need not feel bound by temporal sequence in moving from beginning through middle to end. The pattern of beginning-middle-end is therefore a pattern of choices that is, a meaningful pattern. if

series of choices, this apparently



BEGINNING:

Now

comes is

We

in a story like first

in time,

not always so.

expect a story to begin at the beginning. "The Killers" the beginning may be what but The Great Gatsby illustrates that this to know, then, is what, besides

What we want

temporal sequence, determines the choice of a beginning.

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

15

Rather than losing ourselves in abstractions at this point, let's examine the beginning specifically, the first paragraph of a very famous story, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown."





Young Goodman Brown came

forth at sunset into the

but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named,

Salem

street at

thrust her

own

village;

pretty

head into the

street, letting the

wind

play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to

Goodman Brown. The first thing we may note about this paragraph provides us with a certain amount of information. We

EXPOSITION: is

that

it

are introduced to the story's that he has a wife;

her husband, she

We

we

is

word

Now

Salem,

are informed told that, like

young; and we are told that she

are also informed that

village.

we

name; we are

character;

title

are told her

Brown and

we know,

is

is

his wife live in

pretty.

Salem

a city in Massachusetts.

The

however, indicates the historical setting of the story: it takes place before Salem became a city. Finally, we are informed that Young Goodman Brown is parting from His wife. We are not told at this point whether he is going on a trivial errand or a long journey. This information is given a bit later in the story; the beginning is not here, nor is it usually, limited to a single paragraph. "village,"

The name

usually given to the process by which the writer im-

parts to the reader information necessary to the understanding of the story

is

mary function

"exposition," and exposition of the beginning of

any

is

normally a pri-

story.

THE ELEMENT OF INSTABILITY: It is seldom, in fiction of any that the beginning, however expository it may seem, does not imply more than the facts it presents. For the situation with which the story begins must have a certain openness, must be capable of some sort of development, or else there would be no story. In short, we may expect that the situation merit,

with which the story begins will contain within overt element of instability.

it

a hidden or

HOW

16

What evidence find in the first

TO ANALYZE FICTION do we Goodman Brown"? Ap-

of instability, whether hidden or overt,

paragraph of "Young

Hawthorne happy marriage. We

parently,

presenting a picture of an almost ideally

is

note, for instance, that the

even after starting out, pauses to kiss unsettling elements in this paragraph.

young husband,

his wife. Yet, there are

parting. Again, we do not long they will be apart. Yet we that any separation is a potential challenge to the stability of a relationship. Secondly, there are certain ambiguities in the presentation of the young wife. She is, we are told,

First of

know know

the

all,

young couple are

how

at this point for

named

wind playing with For one thing, the detail the pink ribbons, combined with her prettiness, makes us

aptly

Faith.

of

the image of the

Still,

the ribbons of her cap

is

disturbing.

suspect the possibility of vanity as a quality of Faith's charac-

and vanity

always a potential source of instability. FiSalem village. Any reasonably informed reader must be aware of the Salem witch hunts of the seventer,

is

nally, the story is set in

teenth century. Naturally,

we wonder

if

witchcraft

is

to play a

part in the story about to unfold.

In short, while the

on a

tal bliss,

certain troubling details will

aware of the potential ness

paragraph of Hawthorne's story seems an almost idyllic picture of mari-

first

superficial first reading

of course,

will,

make

the sensitive reader

instability in the situation. This

become more

aware-

precise as the story pro-

gresses. Eventually, the reader will see

which of the potential

sources of instability constitute the real threat to the apparent stability of the individual situation

take.

As

these points

become

and what form this threat will we move from the begin-

clear,

ning to the middle of the story.

The beginning

of a story then,

in

addition to the necessary

exposition, gives us the picture of a situation in which there exist sources of instability,

or overt.

Brown"

which may

is

typical.

But

it

be latent

"Young Goodman

should not be concluded that the

beginning of every story will be in story.

at the outset

In these respects, the beginning of

all

details like that of this

Again, the author has a number of choices open to him.

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

17

CHOICE AND BEGINNINGS: The beginning of "Young Goodman Brown" is scenic, a term whose meaning will be made Chapter 5. For the moment, let us just observe that Hawthorne begins his story with the direct presentation of two characters in action, rather than with a more generalized sort of introductory passage. The beginning of "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," another story by Hawthorne, is quite difclear in

ferent:

After the kings of Great Britain had assumed the right of appointing the colonial governors, the measures of the

seldom met with the ready and generous approbawhich had been paid to those of their predecessors, under the original charters. The people looked with most jealous scrutiny to the exercise of power which did not emanate from themselves, and they usually rewarded their ruler? with slender gratitude for the compliances by which, in softening their instructions from beyond the sea, they had incurred the reprehension of those who latter

tion

gave them.

.

.

.

The is

story is, then, placed explicitly in a historical setting, which presented to us in general terms before the introduction of

specific action or characters. Why Hawthorne chose one kind of beginning for "Young Goodman Brown" and another

any

"My

Kinsman, Major Molineux" is not a question we need Both beginnings, we should note, fulfill an expository function, while suggesting (more explicitly in "My Kinsman, Major Molineux") sources of instability in the initial for

settle here.

situation.

THE MIDDLE-CONFLICT, COMPLICATION, CLIMAX: from the end of the beginning to the beginning of

We move the middle

as the elements tending towards instability in the initial situ-

what we recognize as a pattern of "Young Goodman Brown" this pattern emerges

ation group themselves into conflict.

In

upon Brown's encounter with a strange man in the forest. Brown has been thinking of what is to happen that night and musing that knowledge of it would kill his wife, Faith. The strange man has been expecting Brown and is, it seems, to be his companion for the evening. But Brown indicates that he

HOW

18

TO ANALYZE FICTION

wishes to return home. will of his

Note

companion

that this conflict

we observed

It

is

in

Brown's attempt to

that the conflict

is

becomes

resist the

evident.

related to the elements of instability

first paragraph of the story. To be weakness in Faith's character is not yet developed. But the possible dangers in a parting from loved ones are certainly involved in Young Goodman Brown's journey into a dark forest where terrible work is to be done. And the diabolical overtones of this must remind us of the hints of witchcraft we rind in the Salem setting.

in

the very

sure, the suggestion of

COMPLICATION AND CLIMAX: wards

conflict

is

Just

as

a

development

latent in the initial situation, so

ment toward climax latent in from the initial statement of

the initial conflict. conflict to the

is

to-

a develop-

The movement

climax is often rereached when the

ferred to as complication. The climax is complication attains its highest point of intensity, from which

point the outcome of the story

In

"Young Goodman Brown,"

is

inevitable.

the complication consists pri-

which the stranger (who is, we are told, the Devil) leads the half-resisting Brown. Also included is the process by which the hero's resistance is weakened until he numbers himself among the converts to the diabolical religion whose rites are being celebrated. But the hero's conmarily of the diabolical

version

is

not

itself

of intensity, occurs

rites to

the climax. This, the story's highest point

when Brown

finds that his wife, Faith, the wife he had believed would be killed by the very thought of

such

evil practices, is

The importance

among

the converts.

of complication in fiction cannot be overestimated. Without adequate complication, the conflict would remain inert, its possibilities never realized. And it is by his control of complication that the writer gradually increases the intensity of his narrative, thus preparing us to receive the full impact of the climax. As a rough measure of the importance of complication, examination will reveal that the largest part of "Young Goodman Brown," as of any great work of fiction, is devoted to complication. It is hardly an overstatement to say that it is in his invention and control of complication that

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

the great writer of fiction

THE END:

most

19

fully reveals his genius.

In our three-part division of the

work

of fiction,

end consists of everything from the climax to the denouement, or outcome of the story. In "Young Goodman Brown the end is devoted to the aftermath of Brown's experience in the forest. Shattered by what has happened, he lives out his life in misery, and, we are told, "his dying hour was gloom." the

1 '

We

began by discussing the structure of plot in terms of beginand end. We may now see that the beginning takes us from exposition to the initial statement of conflict; the middle, from conflict through complication to climax; and the end, from climax to denouement. ning, middle,

A NOTE ON concerns

The

CONFLICT:

itself

many single man

are of

conflict within a

the

conflict

A

story

which

may

fiction

deal with a

desire vs. duty), a conflict

(e.g.,

between men, a conflict between man and nature, and so on. You state

with

conflicts

kinds.

man and may often

society,

find

it

between

helpful to

of a story in terms applicable to a sports

A

event or court case, for example, vs. B, the hero's individual conscience vs. the demands of society. How would you state the conflict of a story in

terms applicable to a sport?

THE LAWS OF PLOT In forming the particular plot of his story, the writer may be expected to follow certain laws. When we speak of the laws of plot, we do not mean the kinds of laws passed by legislative bodies.

We mean

rather generalizations

tice of the best writers

laws

is

not,

through the ages.

therefore,

a

crime.

Still,

drawn from the pracTo deviate from these

we may expect

writers of the future will continue to follow the ciples observed

by

their great predecessors.

that

basic prin-

In fact, apparent

deviations from these laws will often turn out on closer inspection to be not deviations at

all,

but

new

applications of the old

principles.

PLAUSIBILITY: the

Of

most important

the laws governing plot in fiction, one of is

certainly the law of plausibility.

To

say

— HOW

20

TO ANALYZE FICTION

that a story has plausibility

vincing on

its

own

simply to say that

is

it

is

con-

terms.

There are, then, two steps involved in judging whether a story has plausibility. For before we can determine whether a story is convincing on its own terms, we must recognize what those terms are.

The demand

must

for instance, be conhave a right to demand that a story be plausible; at least, the great works of fiction always have been plausible. We have no right to demand that a story be realistic, for realism is only one of the many modes for plausibility

fused with the

demand

for realism.

not,

We

of fiction.

A

story

may

plausible

is

find

when

it

is

true to

itself.

Skeptical readers

unrealistic that the Devil appears as a character in

it

"Young Goodman Brown." But even these readers must admit if we accept the Devil's direct intrusion in human affairs

that,

as a premise, the rest of the story

is

perfectly convincing.

Consider the denouement, for instance. Brown's "dying hour was gloom." Note how naturally this flows from what has gone before. Brown dies in gloom because he is unable to bear the insight into man's sinful nature he has received in the forest. And this insight is unbearable because, before going into the forest, Brown had an idealized, rather than realistic, view of human nature. This idealized view had made him believe that his wife, Faith, would be killed by the very thought of sin. He was unable to see her as human, that is, as capable of sin just as he is capable of sin. And his extreme reaction to his

new good

insight to

is

him

entirely plausible, for just as Faith

before,

now

she seems totally

evil.

seemed totally At the end of

Brown is unable to accept the mixed. There is, then, a consistency underlying the superficial reversal in Brown's character

the story, as at the beginning, truth that

human

and outlook. And

nature this

is

consistency

is

the basis of the story's

plausibility, of its truth to itself.

SURPRISE: to itself.

we have said, implies a story's truth seems to suggest that a story's end is some-

Plausibility,

Now

this

HOW how

contained in

same

its

TO ANALYZE FICTION

beginning. In a sense, this

time, a story that never surprises us

rather dull reading. But

how may

is

21 is

At

true.

likely

to

the

prove

the apparently contradictory

claims of surprise and plausibility be reconciled?

An

answer mav be suggested by the simple example of the pure When, at the end of the second-to-last chapter in a novel by John Dickson Carr or Agatha Christie, the murderer's identity is revealed, we want to be surprised. Indeed, detective story.

if

we

are not surprised

we

quite rightly consider this a flaw in

the novel.

But then we turn

to the last chapter.

For a detective novel does

not usually end with the identification of the murderer. After

he has identified the murderer, the great detective proceeds to explain the process of reasoning by which he has arrived at his

And now we want to be convinced that the solution which seemed so surprising was in fact inevitable the only

solution.



possible solution in the light of the evidence. this

demand

Now

what

is

not satisfied,

we

feel that the

And

novel

is

again,

if

flawed.

even mechanical, in the detective story fiction. We want to be surprised, but then we want to be satisfied that the surprise does not violate the basic law of plausibility. Is it surprising that Faith is at the dark rites of the forest? It is also plausible. We are, after all, all sinners. And we are not asked to accept Faith's presence until it has been made clear that virtually the entire population of Salem village, including the preacher and Brown's is

is

explicit,

good

implicit in all

own

parents,

is

also present. Finally,

we saw in of her human

beginning of the story, hair the pathetic flag

SUSPENSE:

A

third

arouses suspense. tainty as to the

recall that, at the very

frailty.

law governing plot

is

By suspense we mean an

outcome of

the story.

than a matter of not knowing

know how

we

the pink ribbons in Faith's

how

that

a

good

plot

expectant uncer-

True suspense

things will turn out.

is

more

I

don't

hundreds of stories that I've never read, but I'm hardly in suspense about them. The suspense of which we speak involves some awareness of the possibilities and, ideally, some concern about them. Suspense things

turn

out

in

HOW

22

TO ANALYZE FICTION

we become aware of the incipient instability in a "Young Goodman Brown," for instance, we are in suspense as soon as we are aware that Faith might be in the forest. Our suspense as to this point is relieved when we

develops as situation.

In

learn that she

A

is

there.

device conducive to suspense is foreshadowing. By this we introducing details which hint at the direction the story

mean

going to take. Hawthorne, for instance, introduces details suggest Faith's presence before explicitly revealing her presence to us. He thus builds up in us the expectation (not, however, the certainty) that she will be there, then satisfies that is

that

expectation.

PLOT

AND

make

of plot

UNITY: is

that

that a plot that

fits

The one overriding demand we commonly it

have unity.

It

should be clear by

now

the description suggested in the present

chapter must inevitably have unity. Any plot that has a true beginning, middle, and end and that follows the laws of plausibility,

surprise,

we mean by

and suspense must have

unity, for that

is

all

unity.

SUBPLOTS: A special problem relating to unity arises in some longer works of fiction. This is the problem of the subplot, by which is meant a sequence of events distinct, at least in part, from the main plot. Where a subplot exists, we may expect that one of two things is true. First, the subplot may be closely related to the main plot, for instance as an analogy to the main plot. The clearest example of this comes not from fiction but from drama. In Shakespeare's King Lear the subplot involving Gloucester and his sons is clearly analogous to the main plot involving Lear and his daughters. A second possibility is that the work's principle of unity is to be found in some element other than plot for instance in theme, which will be discussed in Chapter 7.



If neither of these two conditions is met, the subplot compromises the unity of the work as a whole and is to that extent a flaw. A work flawed in this way may still be excellent, however. The episode of "The Man on the Hill" in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones is generally considered a violation of unity,

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

Tom

but few would deny that

23

one of the great English is that, apart from this one flaw, Tom Jones has one of the most intricately unified plots in the history of the novel and also has virtues other than unity (e.g., vitality) which must be taken into account in any adequate evaluation. novels.

The explanation

PLOT AS UNITY: single

As

Jones

is

of this judgment

this discussion suggests, plot

most important device making for unity

may be

the

in a particular

and end, the

story. In organizing events into beginning, middle,

author is imposing on, or discovering in, the raw material of experience that sense of order which is what we mean by unity in art.

PLOT AS EXPRESSION:

It

seemed

would be unfortunate

if this

analytic

merely a mechanical process. In fact, plot is of the highest importance in expressing the meaning of a work of fiction. It is through plot that the author organizes the raw material of experience, and an author's way of organizing experience must tell us a great that is, about deal about his way of understanding experience the meaning experience has for him. Surely our sense of the meaning of experience is closely tied to our understanding of discussion of plot

to suggest that plotting

is



what causes what, and causal

relationships.

Brown's gloom

We may

is

To

it

is

the

business of plot to clarify

recognize

to recognize the

the

cause

meaning of

of

Goodman

his story.

conclude, then, that an understanding of plot is the in the understanding of fiction. Plot, says

most important factor Aristotle,

is

fiction, too.

the soul of tragedy.

It

may

well be the soul of

CHAPTER

2

CHARACTER INTRODUCTION: from a

results

way

In the preceding chapter

of saying the

no plots that

is

made by

series of choices

same thing

in life; plot

is

is

that plot

we saw

that plot

Another There are

the author. is artificial.

form on experience

the imposition of

essentially formless.

Now, even

the reader

who

has never before thought of the little difficulty accepting

question in these terms should have

view of

this

that plot

is

plot.

We

The reader may

are

that

artificial,

find

it

it

more

acter in these terms. For,

life.

"characters"

To



difficult,

in

however, to think of char-

there are

And most

certainly are people.

—or

something made up.

is

if

however vaguely,

really aware,

all

no

plots in

there

life,

of us tend to expect the people to be similar to the people in

fiction

say of a fictional character that he

is

"artificial" is

usu-

imply disapproval. Whatever degree of artifice we are willing to allow in plot, we expect characters to be "natural" ally to

or "lifelike."

LIFELIKENESS

THE STANDARD OF LIFELIKENESS:

It is

the argument of this

chapter that the standard of lifelikeness is inadequate for judging character in fiction. At best, the notion of lifelikeness is an oversimplification. fictional character must be other things

A

besides

lifelike,

and the standard of

us to understand very is

presented in

much about

the

lifelikeness

ways

in

doesn't help

which character

fiction.

But apart from being an oversimplification, the standard of lifelikeness

too

may be downright

literally.

That

is,

misleading, especially

the search for lifelikeness

24

may

if

taken

lead the

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

much

reader to overlook

that

25

essential in literary character-

is

ization.

Just

what do we mean when we say a character should be

lifelike?

What

kind of

we imposing an

Would

we should

fictional characters

saying

and

we should recognize

We

not a simple one.

entirely ignore the relation

real

human

and

real

human

beings. Rather, I

is a complex, should be aware, then, not only of the

that this relation

similarities but also of the differences

acters

we

aren't

great characters of fiction

the

not suggesting that

between

am

If

Would Hamlet? Don Quixote? Captain Ahab?

this test?

am

we know,

on the author's meet

excessively severe limitation

creative powers?

I

should a character be like?

life

characters should be like the people

insist that

between

fictional

char-

beings.

CHARACTER AND FREEDOM: Whatever is true of the amount of freedom human beings enjoy, the fictional character is never entirely free. For, unlike the real human being, the fictional character

is

part of an artistic whole and

One

the needs of that whole. writer of fiction

is

to create

must always serve

most and maintain the

delicate tasks of the

of the

illusion that his

same time making sure they free character would be free of

characters are free, while at the

For a

are not really so.

really

duty to the story of which he is a part. And a story which admitted such freedom could never achieve unity. The necessity of being fitted into a satisfying artistic whole is the most imhis

portant

human

difference

being and

is

between

the

the basis of

CHARACTER AND CHOICE: writer to be able to observe

It

fictional all

is

human

series of choices.

interest



ter for its

He must

work

the

The

necessity of plac-

of art forces the author into a

always be prepared to sacrifice one

for instance, the interest of "lifelikeness" in charac-

own

sake



for the sake of others, for instance, the

interest in plot, in theme, in the unity of the whole.

must make sure that the choices he do not become too obvious, for he wants us time, he

and

not enough, then, for a nature and, from his ob-

servations, to imagine lifelike characters.

ing character in a unified

character

the other differences.

is

At

the

forced to

same

make

to concentrate

on

HOW

26 the story, not

on the

TO ANALYZE FICTION he had

difficulties

THE STANDARD OF RELEVANCE: must attend

Any

in writing

it.

discussion of character

between charand the other elements of the story, and between characand the story as a whole. That is, character must be

in fiction, then,

to the relationships

acter ter

considered as part of the story's internal structure.

But

just as

real

world

to the real

we

we

in

ultimately refer the story as a whole to the

which we

human

live

beings

our

lives,

who

so

we may

refer the fictional characters to ourselves. I

being

I

know

refer character

inhabit that world. Essentially,

am

the

human

best.

point the standard of lifelikeness may seem to suggest once again. But the limitations of that standard should now be even more clear. For if we ask that the characters be like ourselves or like the people we know, we are not only setting boundaries on the writer's imagination, but we may also be overlooking the function of character within the story.

At

this

itself

More

to the point than the standard of lifelikeness is the standard of relevance. According to this standard, the question is not

whether the

is like me. Rather, the question do with me. In other words, what is the character's relevance to me. is,

fictional character

what has he

UNIVERSAL

AND

ard of relevance

freedom

to

PARTICULAR: is

that

it

The advantage

of the stand-

allows the author a full measure of

in the creation of character

without denying the point

and the reader. Theoretically, the author can range from the pure type, representing one universal quality, to the most eccentric of individuals. He is bound only by the reader's demand that the characters in fiction be in of contact between the character

some way

relevant to his

own

experience.

should be noted that a character may be far removed from "normal" without becoming irrelevant to the reader. In William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury, Benjy, one of the principal characters, is literally an idiot. An important part of the novel is told from Benjy's point of view It

the "average" or

HOW (point of view

discussed in Chapter 4).

is

would be of

likeness

TO ANALYZE FICTION

27

The standard

of

life-

help in judging Faulkner's success

little

How can a reader who is not himself an Faulkner faithfully presents the workwhether idiot determine ings of an idiot's mind? If Faulkner's portrayal of Benjy is generally admired, it is because most readers feel the relevance in

portraying Benjy.

of Benjy.

FORMS OF RELEVANCE:

What do we mean when we

say that

a character as different from the average reader asBenjy still

relevant to the reader? There are essentially two

is

is

ways

in

which a character can be relevant.

A he

character is

is

obviously relevant to us and to our experience

like ourselves

or like others

whom we

then,

is

properly understood as one form of relevance.

acter

is

relevant

if

if

know. Lifelikeness,

there are a lot of people like

him

A

char-

in the real

world. But, as we have already noted, the world does not contain many Hamlets, Don Quixotes, or Captain Ahabs. Are these characters, so often numbered among the great literary creations, therefore irrelevant to

of relevance tions has

is

us?

If so,

then either the standard

worthless, or the critical judgment of genera-

been mistaken.

What we must do is to recognize a second form of relevance. There are not many Don Quixotes around, but there is something of Don Quixote in each of us. It is in this sense that we feel his relevance to us. And it may be that this form of relevance, rather than lifelikeness, is the secret of the power the great characters of fiction hold for us.

JUDGING FICTIONAL CHARACTERS:

In judging fictional char-

seem appropriate. most important are: What is the relevance of this character to me? In what ways does he contribute to the story of which he is part? Any judgment that ignores either of these acters, then, there are certain questions that

Two

of the

questions will probably be inadequate.

HOW

28

SIMPLE

TO ANALYZE FICTION

AND COMPLEX CHARACTERS

The preceding paragraph

standards for judging

suggests

fic-

But before these or any standards may be responsibly applied it is necessary to examine more clearly the portrayal of character in fiction. We have to know more about the kinds of characters that appear in fiction and about the means by which character is portrayed. tional characters.

With regard

to the kinds of characters portrayed,

helpful to follow the practice of tional characters into

many

two general

critics

categories.

it

may be

and divide

fic-

Our names

for

complex characters. Other critics, in making essentially the same division, sometimes use different terms. One of the most suggestive statements of the distinction we have in mind is that of E. M. Forster, who, in his Aspects of the Novel, divides the characters of fiction into "flat" and "round" characters. these categories will be simple characters and

SIMPLE (FLAT) CHARACTERS: is

less the representation of a

bodiment of a ster calls this

The

simple, or

human

flat,

character

personality than the

em-

single attitude or obsession in a character. For-

kind of character

flat

because

we

see only one

side of him.

Included

among

simple characters are

all

the familiar types, or

The mark of the stereotyped character he can be summed up adequately in a formula: the

stereotypes, of fiction. is

that

noble savage, the trusted old family retainer, and the poor but honest working

Not

girl

are a few familiar fictional types.

simple characters, however, are stereotypes like those

all

referred to above.

The essence

of the sterotype

pressed in a formula that applies to a large

may be

number

ex-

of fictional

drawn from a large number of works of fiction. We must recognize the existence of a second kind of simple charcharacters,

Like

acter.

summed up that

his

fiction

the

stereotype,

formula

whom

it

is

his

exactly

this

kind of character

may

But he differs from the stereotype own; there is no other character

in a formula.

fits.

be in

in

HOW An Example from are

filled

TO ANALYZE FICTION

Dickens:

of Charles Dickens

with examples of this second kind of simple character.

Consider, for instance, Uriah Copperfield. Uriah ality is

The works

29

made up

is

Heep

in

Dickens' novel David

certainly a simple character; his person-

of very few elements. In fact, he

may be

de-

more than an embodiment of his peculiar kind of "humility." The point is that his humility is of a peculiar kind. scribed as no

Uriah Heep is a simple character but he because there is no one else quite like him

is

not a stereotype,

in fiction.

COMPLEX (ROUND) CHARACTERS: At the other end of the spectrum is the complex character, called round by Forster because we see all sides of him. The complex character is obviously more lifelike than the simple, because in life people are not simply embodiments of single attitudes. It would be pointless to list examples of complex characters from fiction. If Dickens is a master of the simple character, most of the great English novelists excel in portraying complex characters. Becky Sharp, the protagonist of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, is one example; the husband, Rawdon Crawley, is another. In fact, Vanity Fair abounds in brilliantly portrayed complex characters. If

the

mark

of the simple character

up adequately

in

a formula, the

is

that he can be

mark

of the

summed

complex char-

acter is that he is capable of surprising us. Rawdon Crawley's deepening sense of responsibility in Vanity Fair, for instance, is surprising in the light of the first impression he makes. But in character, as in plot, surprise must not arise from a violation of plausibility. Thackeray's portrayal of Rawdon Crawley is one of the great examples in English fiction of a writer's convincing us of profound changes in one of his characters. And his success is based in large part on our awareness, which may become conscious awareness only in the process of analysis, that the seeds of change, and of precisely this kind of change, have been present in Rawdon from the start.

GRADATIONS

IN COMPLEXITY: In contrasting simple and complex characters above, I used the metaphor of the spectrum. This was not accidental. For characters in fiction should not be thought of as existing in sealed compartments, one marked "simple," the other "complex." The metaphor of the

HOW

30

TO ANALYZE FICTION

spectrum, connoting subtle differences in gradation as we move from the simple to the complex, is more to the point. Captain Ahab, in Melville's Moby Dick, is certainly closer to the simple than to the complex end of the spectrum, but he is not, like

many

of the stereotypes of boys' fiction, an absolutely simple

Although he unswervingly pursues a single goal throughout the novel, and is in this respect a simple character, he is capable at least of some hesitation, self-doubt, internal division, and therefore tends towards complexity. In the same novel, Ishmael and Starbuck are more complex than Ahab, yet neither is equal in complexity to Becky Sharp and Rawdon Crawley. Complexity, then, is a matter of degree; a character may be more or less complex. character.

FUNCTION OF COMPLEX CHARACTERS: Should a writer choose complexity or simplicity in the portrayal of character? It is often suggested (by Forster, among others) that the complex, or round, character is a higher kind of achievement than the simple. As we shall see, this view must be seriously qualified. But let's begin by examining the functions that can best be served by the complex character. COMPLEXITY AND RELEVANCE: more

lifelike

Complex

characters

are

we have seen, human being can

than simple characters and, as

one form of relevance. No real summed up in a formula, as a simple character can. Certainly no reader of fiction would be willing to admit that he can be so summed up. Real human beings are capable of surprising us. The complex character can surprise us; the lifelikeness

is

be adequately

simple character cannot.

We may

plexity of character tends to

conclude, then, that com-

produce

lifelikeness in the

work

of fiction.

COMPLEXITY AND CRAFTSMANSHIP:

There

is

another basis

comAs an achievement in literary craftsmanship, the complex character is in many ways more difficult than the simple. The simple character need only repeat his basic forfor the admiration critics often express for the well-drawn

plex character.

mula each time he appears on the scene. Revealing a character's complexity to the reader, on the other hand, is an immensely complicated business. Complexity cannot be achieved

HOW at the price of

TO ANALYZE FICTION

coherence, however.

It

complex character not have a formula,

is

31

not enough that the

that he act differently at

different points in the story. The complexity we want is the complexity of a unified character. The writer must, then, satisfy simultaneously our demand for complexity and our demand for unity. This is why writers are condemned for letting their personages behave "out of character," that is, in a manner inconsistent with what we know of them. To behave in this way lends a character complexity, perhaps, but at the cost of unity. If we did not feel that Rawdon Crawley of the early scenes of Vanity Fair was capable of becoming the Rawdon Crawley of the later scenes, he would be a failure as a character. It is the combination of complexity and unity, the sense of unity in complexity, that is impressive. It may be objected at this point that, since human beings often act inconsistently, there is no reason to demand unity of fictional characters. There are several possible answers to this objection. First, it is not certain that human

CONSISTENCY:

The apparent inconsistencies simply indicate the limits of our knowl-

beings do really act inconsistently. of

human

may

behavior

edge of ourselves and others. Seen in the right perspective, the eye of God or the psychoanalyst for example, we may behave more consistently than we know.

But we need not

in all

retreat to metaphysics or psychoanalysis to

We

need only remind ourselves once again however complex, is not a human being. He is himself an artistic creation, part of an artistic whole. And we traditionally demand of art a sense of form we do not find in life. This sense of form is, in fact, probably the essential difference between art and life. Briefly, when we praise a literary character for being lifelike, we should remember that this is not an adjective we would apply to a human being. A thing cannot be lifelike unless it is really not alive. settle this

problem.

that the fictional character,

Finally,

depict

it

may

be pointed out that the writer of

inconsistency

advises in his Poetics,

him be

in if

human

behavior.

a character

consistently inconsistent.

is

But,

fiction

as

can

Aristotle

to be inconsistent, let

Inconsistency should not be

something the writer resorts to simply to get him out of plot

HOW

32 difficulties, as

when

TO ANALYZE FICTION

the wicked uncle has a change of heart in

the last chapter in order that the story

wise impossible, and

incredible,

still

may come

an other-

to

happy ending.

FUNCTIONS OF SIMPLE CHARACTERS:

Consistency should be

no problem with simple characters, for the simple character is by definition consistent. What many readers object to in simple characters

that they are consistent at the price of complexity,

is

complexity violates our sense of the human is some truth in this charge, but we must recognize that the simple character can perform many impor-

and

their lack of

There

personality.

tant functions in the

AND

SIMPLICITY

human

work

of fiction.

We

LIFELIKENESS:

have said

that,

beings are complex, complex characters are

because

more

life-

than simple characters. Now we must see that simple characters can make an important contribution to the overall lifelike

likeness of a

work

of fiction.

The fact is, if I think of my more simple than complex

life

as a story,

characters.

I

find

Does

this

it

contains

contradict

what has been said about the complexity of the human personality?

Not

really.

In the story of

mean

doesn't

but that of theirs.

my

that

Again,

life, I

am

I

am

I

a matter of perspective.

the most complex character. This

really

am more aware

I

it's

of

know myself from

more complex than other

my own

people,

complexities than

I

am

the inside, others only from the

outside.

Still,

among

the "others," there are

some

I

know

quite well.

These include my immediate family and my closest friends. I can't know them as well as I know myself, but I can be aware of

some

of their complexities.

And

then there are the other "others," ranging from casual acquaintances to people I pass in the street. In the eye of God, no doubt, each of these is a highly complex personality, but in

my

they

eyes they are simple characters. Whatever complexity

may have

1

know

little

or nothing about.

HOW And

and

minor

The use of simple characters to fulfill work of fiction satisfies my sense of life, not it really is (the eye of God, again), but as I exThe simple character, then, can serve very well as

lifelikeness.

roles in a

perhaps as perience a

33

brings us to the connection between the simple char-

this

acter

TO ANALYZE FICTION

it.

minor character

we have

in fiction, contributing, as

seen, to

our sense of the overall lifelikeness of the story.

SIMPLICITY is

AND IMAGINATION:

not limited

in fiction to

But the simple character

use as a minor character, part of the

background against which the main action is played out. As we have seen, Captain Ahab, protagonist of Melville's Moby Dick, is

essentially a simple character, as are

characters in Dickens.

Is

many

a writer justified

in

of the principal

making major

characters simple?

We must first of all distinguish again between the stereotyped simple character (the poor but honest working girl) and the individualized simple character

(Ahab, Uriah Heep). Stereo-

types are substitutes for imagination; the individualized simple

character

is

an original imaginative creation. Except

in

very

appear as major characters only in fiction of a very low order. But the individualized simple character may be an imaginative accomplishment worthy special circumstances, stereotypes will

to take a central position in fiction of the

very highest order.

Again, we must remind ourselves that relevance, rather than 1 is the important standard. Ahab is not lifelike. have never met anyone like him, and I trust I never shall. But in Ahab's total commitment to an obsession, I recognize a part of myself. That is the secret of his relevance, of his power. That is why, in spite of his relative simplicity, he can stand at the very center of a major work of fiction.

lifelikeness,

We may make author's end

is

a

few tentative generalizations. Insofar

as

the

realism, the accurate presentation of the surface

of life, we may expect that his principal characters will be complex. The simple character is the more likely to appear in a major role as the writer drifts away from realism. Thackeray,

the realist, gives

us

complex characters, while

Melville,

the symbolic romancer, gives us a simple character as protag-

HOW

34

kind of simple character

onist. Finally, that

type

may appear

TO ANALYZE FICTION

in

we

call the stereo-

a minor role in serious fiction, but will

play a major part, as a general rule, only in inferior

EVALUATION OF CHARACTER TYPES: simplification to assert

character

It

is,

fiction.

then,

vithout qualification that the

a greater achievement than the simple. If

is

an over-

complex

we

think

divorced from the other elements of fiction, we may place a high value on complexity. But if we examine character in the light of the story as a whole, we must of character in

itself,

see that complexity simplicity.

is

not necessarily a greater virtue than

We

to the story.

must always ask what the character contributes And the author must always choose the kind of

character appropriate to his overall purpose.

METHODS OF CHARACTER PORTRAYAL The author must choose not only what kind

of characters he but also by what methods he will present them. There are a number of methods available to the author, each with its advantages and disadvantages. We shall classify these will present,

as the discursive, the dramatic,

and the contextual.

DISCURSIVE METHOD: The author who chooses the discursive method simply tells us about his characters. He enumerates their qualities and may even express approval or disapproval of them. The advantages of this method are simplicity and economy. The writer who is content to tell us directly about his characters can quickly finish the job of characterization and go on to other things. This method, like the others, has its disadvantages. It is relatively mechanical and discourages the reader's imaginative participation. That is, the reader is not encouraged to react directly to the characters, to make up his own mind about them, as he must react to and make up his own mind about the real people he meets.

Modern

writers

method

of

and

critics

have tended to regard the discursive

characterization

as

intrinsically

methods. The author, according to

this view,

inferior

to

should not

other tell

us,

HOW he should show oversimplifies.

under certain

TO ANALYZE FICTION

Like most

us.

The

35

critical generalizations, this

one

method can be the best choice circumstances. When economy and directness are discursive

may

desired, the author

well consider the discursive method.

THE DRAMATIC METHOD:

Economy and directness are always always the virtues appropriate to the the discursive method will not always

virtues, but they are not

Therefore,

situation.

serve.

The

principal alternative to the discursive

method

dramatic method, the method of showing rather than

is

the

telling.

In the dramatic method, the author allows his characters to reveal themselves to us through their

This, of course,

is

how

character

is

own words and

actions.

revealed to us in drama;

that is why we call this method dramatic. But it is also how people reveal themselves to us in life. In life, there is no author around to tell us that Mr. is generous. Rather, by observing what Mr. does and what he says, we may conclude that Mr. is generous. It is the same with the fictional character pre-

X

X

X

sented dramatically.

The advantages of the dramatic method should be obvious. Compared to the discursive method, the dramatic is more lifelike

and

invites the reader's

active participation in the story.

The dramatic method has been

generally favored by writers of

fiction in the twentieth century.

This method has

its

disadvantages.

the discursive, since to

while

It is

less

economical than

show takes longer than

to

tell.

And,

encourages the reader's active participation, it also increases the possibility of his misjudging the character. This second difficulty should, of course, not exist for the alert reader, provided the author has been sufficiently skillful in his showing. When vividness of presentation is more important than it

economy, the writer

will

choose the dramatic method.

CHARACTERS ON OTHER CHARACTERS: general heading of the dramatic

method

is

Included under the the device of having

one character in a story talk about another. The reader must remember, of course, that information received in this way is not necessarily reliable.

What

A

sa>7 of

B may

tell

us

more

HOW

36

A

TO ANALYZE FICTION

about than about B. about character.

this is

Still,

one source of information

THE CONTEXTUAL METHOD: By the contextual method we mean the device of suggesting character by the verbal context that surrounds the character.

If,

a character

for instance,

is

constantly described in terms appropriate to a beast of prey, the reader

may

well conclude that the author

is

trying to

tell

him something.

MIXING METHODS:

The reader

will

rarely find

a

work

of

which only one of the methods outlined above is employed. Indeed, the contextual method can be used effectively only in combination with other methods. In evaluating an author's methods of characterization, the reader must keep in mind the appropriateness of the author's methods to the overfiction in

all

design of the story.

AND DEVELOPMENT: Up to this point, we have been talking about character and the methods of portraying it as if the author's job were simply to show the character to us and then go into other things. But the revelation of character may be only part of the author's concern; he may also be interested in the development of character. In Thackeray's portrayal of Rawdon Crawley, for instance, development is of the greatest importance. Development, of course, implies the passage of time. Thus we may expect a greater emphasis on development of character in the novel, since the novel permits the author to REVELATION

show

the passage of time

more

fully,

while the short story will

often concentrate on the revelation of character.

MOTIVATION:

We

must artistic whole. The together is what we most part, consists why they do it. that character

have insisted throughout this discussion always be seen as one element in a larger point at which character and plot

mean by of

come

the term motivation. Plot, for the

what the characters do. Motivation

is

We may

think of motivation as general or particular. General motivation covers such basic human drives as love,* hunger,

greed, and so on. Particular motivation involves the individual

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

37

applications of these basic drives. If the hero acts to impress the heroine, this

is

particular motivation, an application of such

general motives as love and, perhaps, vanity.

It is

part- of co-

herence in character and plot that the reader be able to identify both the general and particular motivation for the actions of the characters.

It

is

the motivation be at

acter

kills,

part of the story's general plausibility that all

times adequate to the action.

we should be

satisfied that

and that the "why" is an adequate reason, or at seem adequate to the character, to act as he does.

CONCLUSION: talked much of

If

a char-

we know why he

In the present chapter

we

least

killed

would

have, of necessity,

character and only occasionally of the relation

must be recognized that kind of discussion can be misleading unless we keep in

of character to the story as a whole. It this

mind

the artificiality of the distinction, for instance, between

character and plot.

We

should note further that character

is

not essential to fiction

same way that plot is. Without plot, fiction is impossible; it is, on the other hand, possible for fiction to get by without what most of us would recognize as character. in the

We

can still recognize, however, that an individual writer may choose to stress either plot or character. For writers who stress character, the main function, perhaps the only function, of plot is to serve the revelation or development of character. But whether an individual author's primary interest is in plot or in character, it is the ability of the author to blend the two into a seamless unity that

is

the

mark

of his genius.

CHAPTER

3

SETTING INTRODUCTION: Everything that happens happens somewhere some time. That element of fiction which reveals to us the where and when of events we call setting. In other words, the at

term "setting" refers to the point

time and space at which

in

The

of George Eliot's Middlemarch, for instance, is an English town in the nineteenth century, that of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises includes Paris, Pamplona, and several other spots in France and

the events of the plot occur.

setting

Spain during the 1920's.

TYPES OF SETTINGS

NEUTRAL SETTINGS:

Often the setting in a work of fiction is more than a reflection of the truth that things have to happen somewhere. The author's principal concern is with plot little

or character, and he sketches in only enough of the setting to

Most

lend the requisite verisimilitude to the action. tion in popular magazines, for instance, has

temporary

much

setting, either

urban or

fic-

Beyond

giving us this

information, the author has no real interest in his setting

and does not encourage such true,

rural.

of the

a vaguely con-

we may speak

The use

interest

of the neutral setting

commercial

fiction.

on our

Henry

is

When

by no means limited

Fielding's

Tom

of the great novels in English, reveals

An

part.

this is

of the setting of the story as "neutral." to slick

Jones, certainly one

little

positive interest in

an inn, Fielding seems to believe, and a barnyard is a barnyard. There is no reason to single out whatever qualities may make the inns and barnyards in one part of England different from their counterparts in other parts of the setting.

inn

is

country. Limits to Neutrality: ing,

Even

in the

work of a

however, the neutrality of the setting

38

is

writer like Field-

not absolute.

If his

HOW inns are typical inns

TO ANALYZE FICTION

and

39

barnyards typical barnyards,

his

still

he recognizes that some scenes are properly set in inns, others in barnyards. He recognizes, that is, the value of a certain appropriateness of setting to event. is true in modern commercial fiction. If a story in one of the monthly women's magazines has a rural setting, this

The same sets

up

and

plot.

in the reader certain expectations regarding character

To

be sure, these expectations are often based on

the crudest sort of stereotypes. Nevertheless, they indicate that

an absolutely neutral setting

THE SPIRITUAL SETTING:

rare.

is

The

expectations aroused in us by

a rural setting suggest that few settings are absolutely neutral, are merely physical. For the modern American reader, a rural setting suggests not just grass, cows, and barns, but certain values which must be called spiritual. As long as the setting is only vaguely and conventionally rural, the values suggested are likely to be vague and conventional as well. But as the physical setting becomes more specific and more vividly rendered, so does the spiritual setting.

because few settings

By

the spiritual setting, then,

we mean the values embodied The phrase "a small mid-

implied by the physical setting.

in or

western town"

New York

may immediately

suggest one set of values, while

City suggests quite another. That this

is

not only

beyond fiction may be seen from a recent court case. A judge awarded custody of a child to the child's grandparents on the grounds that the grandparents were "good, mid western people." Apparently the term "midwestern" had for the judge a spiritual as well as geographical signifitrue in fiction but extends

cance.

We

Refining the Spiritual Setting: would hardly expect a writer of any merit to accept the judge's easy identification of the midwestern with the virtuous. This

is precisely the kind of stereotype the serious writer will seek to avoid. He will also, of course, seek to avoid the kind of reverse stereotype which would make of "midwestern" a term of abuse.

The

serious writer will recognize,

and

will force us to recog-

HOW

40

TO ANALYZE FICTION

no easy relationship between a particular He will, by precise observation and careful rendering, refine the setting until we are aware of the complex of conflicting values that may inhere in a particular place and time. George Eliot's portrayal of life in a Victorian English town in her novel Middlemarch is one of the that there

nize,

is

physical setting and virtue or vice.

highest achievements of this sort in English fiction.

SETTING AS DYNAMIC: that

setting

which

the

What has been said should indicate need not mean merely a static backdrop before unfolds

action

itself.

Setting

may

thrust

itself

dynamically into the action, affecting events and being in turn affected by them, until setting seems to assume the role of a

major character.

Our

original definition of setting as a point in time

and space

some development. For time and space

are not themselves neutral. To be born into one century rather than another, in one region rather than another, can have the profoundest effects on every aspect of a person's life. The

therefore needs

same

attitude

may mark

a

man

one generation, one country, a traitor

as a rebel in

a reactionary in the next; a hero in another.

in

THE ELEMENTS OF SETTING: What are the elements of which setting is composed? They may be listed under four headings: (1)

the

actual

geographical

location,

including

scenery, even the details of a room's interior;

pations and

(3)

modes

the time in

topography, the occu-

(2)

of day-to-day existence of the characters;

which the action takes place,

e.g.,

historical

period, season of the year; (4) the religious, moral, intellectual, social, and emotional environment of the characters.

FUNCTIONS OF SETTING SETTING AS METAPHOR: discussion to the

literal

We

have thus far been limiting our Even what we does not essentially involve a

presentation of setting.

have called "spiritual setting'' departure from the literal, since it extends only to the observable, if intangible, effects that time and place may have on character

HOW Now we

and events.

TO ANALYZE FICTION

41

shall discuss a use of setting that involves

extra-literal elements.

Sometimes to

in fiction

function

as

we encounter

a projection

details of setting that

or objectification

seem

internal

of the

characters or of a pervasive spiritual condition.

states of the

For instance, the fog

that lingers so oppressively in Charles Bleak House serves as a kind of metaphor for the spiritual malaise and confusion of the characters. This is not

Dickens

the that it is

1

same

as

what we

call the spiritual setting.

It

has contributed to the characters' malaise. the other way around.

But not

quite, of course.

Only

in

is

not the fog If

anything,

fantasy could a writer ask

us to believe that a character's internal state could create an

The fog in Bleak House is as truly there as the Middlemareh. But George Eliot asks us to observe the spiritual and emotional effects of the town on the individual, while Dickens asks us to see the fog as a metaphor (i.e., an implied comparison) for the individual's spiritual and emotional external fog.

town

in

state.

ATMOSPHERE: not

A

further function of setting, related

"to

but

metaphorical function, is the creation of atmosphere. Atmosphere has been more talked about than defined, and. because it refers to the suggested rather than the stated, it may be impossible to define satisfactorily. One critic has described it as the air breathed by the reader as he enters the world of the literary work. It is a kind of mood or emotional aura suggested primarily by the setting and helping to establish identical

with

its

A suggestion of mystery and foreboding may be established, for instance, by a description of shapes dimly seen in the darkness. A stormy night carries with it one emotional aura, a sunny morning another. the reader's expectations.

The

close

relation

setting in creating

that often exists between the function of atmosphere and the function of setting as

metaphor may be seen if we refer again to the fog of Dickens' Bleak House. We have seen that the fog serves as a metaphor for the spiritual and emotional state of the principal characters. But it also affects the reader; it is part of the air he breathes

HOW

42

TO ANALYZE FICTION

as he enters the world of Dickens' novel. contributes to the creation of atmosphere.

And

as

such

it

A

We

should note the possibility of contrast in atmosphere. atmosphere created by a bright, sunlit setting may contrast with the inner disturbance of a character. Or there may be contrasting atmospheres in the same story. Our increasing sense of foreboding as the hero walks into the darkening forest in Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" is an example of a gradual and subtle shift in atmosphere. cheerful

SETTING AS THE

DOMINANT ELEMENT:

Like character,

set-

may

be the element of primary importance in a particular story or even in the work of a particular author. Certainly

ting

George

Eliot's

Middlemarch

setting, strikes us as at least as

particularly the

setting,

spiritual

important as plot and character.

In this novel, and others like it, plot and character seem to exist primarily as a means of revealing the effects of setting

on human

life.

TIME AS THE fiction,

DOMINANT

ELEMENT:

many

In

the time in which the action occurs

is

works

of

of the highest

importance. This is especially true of historical fiction, like William Makepeace Thackeray's Henry Esmond or Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. In the latter novel, the French Revolution and the terror that followed it affect the lives of all

the characters.

The customs and moral conventions

may be

of the spiritual setting,

works of

fiction that

Hardy gave is,

he

find

set

it

his

are not intentionally historical.

Jude the Obscure a contemporary

in his

personal

of a particular time, part

of great importance even in

own

fulfillment

period.

within

Still,

the

it

is

Thomas

setting; that

Jude's inability to

moral framework,

spiritual setting, of that particular period that

is

the

the basis of

tragedy. The modern reader may even be more aware than Hardy of the important role time plays in this novel. his

That the particular terms of a moral conflict, like the one in Jude the Obscure, are related to a particular period does not necessarily mean that the work dramatizing this conflict lacks universality.

The

pattern of frustrated rebellion depicted

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

Jude the Obscure is itself universal, although forms in different generations.

in

43 takes different

it

We

should perhaps make a special note of works of fiction which temporal setting takes on added importance with the passage of time. Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby were written in the 1920's about the 1920's. In the years since World War II, this period has had a special fascination for readers. One result is that novels like these two have taken on for modern readers a particular significance as portraits of their period, an interest that could not have been felt in the same way by those in

who

read the novels

when

they

first

Fuchs seem

DOMINANT

spatial

ELEMENT:

or place,

setting,

examples

as

classified

recently,

Henry Roth and Daniel

to be arousing a similar interest.

PLACE AS THE which the

More

appeared.

novels of the 1930's such as those of

of

local

Works

color

or

regionalist

seeks to investigate the effects

particular

geographical

—which

setting

of

fiction

in

dominates are generally regionalism. The on character of a

means,

of

course,

a

spiritual as well as physical setting.

The

what

like to live in a particular not in any sense a rejection of universality. The process of being influenced by the region in which one is born and raised is a universal process. Moreover, we may well discern within the particular mores of a particular place further patterns of behavior that are universal.

regionalist's interest in

place

A



say,

number

most of

the deep South



it is

is

of important writers of fiction have devoted

their

work

in

fiction

to

the depiction of

life

all

in

or a

Among

English novelists, Thomas Hardy is distinguished for his novels of Wessex. In The Return of the Native, one of his most famous novels, Hardy makes particular

of

region.

Egden Heath

human

figures

in

a

force

the story.

more powerful than any of the The United States has produced

distinguished regionalists as well. Willa Cather deals extensively with life on the Nebraska prairie in such works as Antonia;

My

George Washington Cable's The Grandissimes

an important novel of Southern life in the nineteenth century; Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary Wilkins Freeman are among the most is

HOW

44

TO ANALYZE FICTION

significant writers of fiction

devoted to

life

in

New

England.

The names mentioned above

are only a few of the important England and the United States. Other nations have, of course, produced their regionalists as well. The writers regionalists of

differ among themselves in many ways. share the desire to render the authentic qualities of particular places. The greatest of them, like Hardy, seek as

we

regionalists

call

But they

well to of

the

all

discover the regionalists'

universal best

contribution setting can

work

make

in

the

particular.

indicates

clearly

The power positive

the

to literary art.

The nineteenth-century English writer Anthony Trollope and the twentieth-century American William Faulkner are regionalists of a special sort. Each has created an imaginary region as

a setting for his

fiction.

Barsetshire,

the

of

setting

such

The Warden and Barchester Towers by Trollope, and Yoknapatawpha County, setting of many of Faulkner's works, will not be found on any map. Barsetshire is a composite picture of many English counties, while Yoknapatawpha is novels as

based on the actual county in Mississippi where Faulkner lived much of his life. Both Trollope and Faulkner share the regionalists' concern for the effect of setting on character and incident.

SETTING IN NONREALISTIC FICTION: The reader may be disturbed to note that most of what has been said of setting applies to fiction in a more or less realistic mode. What of setting in such genres as fantasy and science fiction? In fact, no specific discussion of setting in these genres is necessary. In fantastic as in realistic fiction, setting may serve the functions discussing and may range, like the settings of

we have been realistic

In short,

from the neutral what has been said of

fiction,

to

the

setting

and

vital

in

essential.

realistic

fiction

applies as well to setting in nonrealistic fiction.

AND THE WHOLE STORY: We have seen that setting be the dominant element in a work of fiction. Still, setting never exists by itself. It is always part of an artistic whole and must be understood as such. Some readers turn to fiction out of a fascination with character. Certainly fiction can satisfy such an interest, but an interest in character divorced from the other elements of fiction is a psychological

SETTING

may

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

rather than a literary interest. for

what

it

This too is can satisfy.

A

readers

may

turn to fiction

them of other times and other places. a legitimate interest in itself and one that- fiction But an interest in setting divorced from the other can

tell

elements of fiction interest.

Some

45

is

literary

a historical or sociological, not a literary, interest

will

always

concentrate

on the

whole work. In evaluation, then,

we have

the presentation of setting. is

a right to

demand

that appropriate to the story as a whole.

may

vividness in

But the vividness we should demand

A

vivid description

be an artistic flaw if it destroys the overall design of the work. For in the best fiction the rendering of setting is never an end in itself. Rather, setting must be one element in a unified artistic whole, and we must ask of setting as of character, not only what interest it has in itself, but also what it contributes to the complex whole that is the of a setting

work

of fiction.

CHAPTER 4

POINT OF VIEW INTRODUCTION:

Few

topics

have

received

more

attention

than point of view. And not only the critics but writers of fiction themselves have been especially drawn in this century to a consideration of this topic; one need only consult the essays of Henry James for an illustration. One might even conclude from a study of critical pronouncements on the subject that the choice of point of view is the most important single choice the writer of fiction makes.

from serious modern

At

the

reader

same

who

time,

critics of fiction

the

average casual

reader,

the

kind of

turns to fiction for pleasure in his leisure time,

hardly seems aware of the issues involved in the choice of point of view. It is not an exaggeration to say that the very term "point of view" is either unfamiliar to, or misunderstood by, the average non-professional, non-scholarly reader of fiction.

All the same

it seems clear that, whether consciously or not, average unreflective reader is affected by point of view and that, whether or not it is the most important choice he must make, the choice of point of view is one to which the

the

writer of fiction

must

give careful attention.

is so, then we had first better be sure that we know what we mean by point of view. One of the problems we face is that the expression "point of view" has several meanings besides the limited, technical one it has in the critical analysis of fiction. In fact my awareness of this problem led me to consider seriously the possibility of using some other term for this topic. But I finally decided that, since this is the term most commonly used, I would only be inviting confusion by

If this

introducing another.

46

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

47

DEFINING POINT OF VIEW

WHAT POINT OF VIEW

IS NOT: It may be best to begin by meaning of point of view in literary terms from other meanings that may be assigned to the same phrase. If you are asked for your point of view on a subject, what do you understand by the request? Chances are, you conclude

distinguishing the

you're being asked to express your opinions or attitudes. This at least, one sense of point of view. It is not, however, the

is,

sense

we have

in

mind when we speak of point of view

AN ANALOGY: view

Let's try an analogy. Let's

in fiction with point of

view

in fiction.

compare point of

in purely physical terms. If

stand directly in front of you, I can't see your shoulder I want to see your shoulder blades, one of us has to move. That is, I have to look at you from another point of view. I

blades. If

In short, from any single physical point of view,

some

things

I

can

see,

and some things

I

can

there

are

not.

THE EYEWITNESS: Now let's imagine that an accident has occurred, two cars have collided. There are four eyewitnesses to the accident. An investigating officer questions the witnesses.

He also questions the drivers of who was in one of the cars. He And

the

two cars and a passenger

questions seven people in

all.

he finds that he has seven quite different accounts of

what happened. Let's

make

clear that

nobody

is

lying.

Each person is telling Why, then, don't their

the truth to the best of his

ability.

stories coincide in all details?

Because each

his

own

is

speaking from

point of view.

When we

say this, we mean in part that each person saw the from a different point of view in physical terms. One witness was on one side of the street, another on the other side, and so on. But we mean a little more. A witness who just happened to be passing by is not involved in the accident in the same way that the drivers are. Relatively

accident

speaking,

the

passerby's

involvement

is

rather

remote.

The

HOW

48

TO ANALYZE FICTION

passenger is certainly more immediately onlooker. But he is not involved

casual

involved in

the

than

a

same way

as the driver, either.

Whose

story is likely to be most reliable? Well, the drivers were most directly involved, but their very involvement may make them unreliable because they can't be entirely objective. A passerby would probably be more objective, but might have observed less. The passenger's account would be useful but limited.

In

short,

whole lack.

no

story,

single

account could be

expected to

tell

the

yet each will provide something that the others

The only account

God's, and that

that

could give the whole

story

is

not likely to be available.

is

THE AUTHOR'S POWER:

In fiction, however, something like

For the author's world he creates in fiction is, after all, similar to God's relation to His created universe. That is, the author is the ultimate source of being of every person, place, thing, and event in his work and knows all there is to know about these creatures of his imagination. But he must decide whether he will exploit his special knowledge. He must, that is, find the point of view most appropriate to the story he wants to tell. a Godlike view of things can be available.

relation to the

POSSIBLE POINTS OF VIEW FIRST

PERSON OR THIRD PERSON?:

A

story

may

be told

from the inside or the outside. When we speak of a story told from the inside, we mean a story told by one of the participants or characters in the story. Stories told from the inside are spoken of as examples of first-person narration, since the 'I" in narrator naturally uses the first personal pronoun referring to himself. Stories told from the outside, by a usually k

nameless narrator with the author,

who may be more are

or less closely identified

spoken of as examples of third-person

narration, since the narrator will rarely refer to himself at

all

(exceptions are found mainly in novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and refers to the characters of the story in

the third person.

HOW

49

TO ANALYZE FICTION

OMNISCIENT OR LIMITED?:

The

person and third-person narration

distinction is

between

first-

commonly made and has

But distinction based merely on grammatical form (We shall see, however, itself to be superficial. that this apparently superficial distinction may have significant implications.) A still more basic distinction is that between its

is

uses.

likely

in

omniscient and limited narration.

THE OMNISCIENT NARRATOR:

The author who chooses

to

knowledge of the fictional universe he has employ the omniscient narrator. Within the

exploit his Godlike

created

will

the work of fiction, the omniscient narrator knows, simply, everything. He can at will enter the mind of any character and tell the reader directly what the character is thinking. He can at one moment be in the city, at the next in the country. In one paragraph he can be with us in the present, in the next- he can take us into the past. The only motive required for his moves from mind to mind, from place to place, from time to time, is the desire to tell the story as well

framework of

as possible.

Vanity Fair is one of the classic examples in English fiction of the use of the omniscient narrator. Thackeraycarries this technique very far indeed, for his narrator not only

Thackeray's

knows everything about the people and events of the story; he knows a good deal about the world in general as well and frequently interrupts the narrative for the purpose of introducing, sometimes seriously, sometimes ironically, bits of moral or philosophical reflection. Such interruptions are not a necessary part of the technique They are seldom to be found in more modern novels using this technique. For the mark of the

of omniscient narration.

omniscient narrator of

knowing

is

not his philosophizing, but his faculty

all.

The omniscient technique Even when, as in Vanity

is

essentially a third-person technique.

Fair, the narrator occasionally refers

to himself in the first person, the characters in the story

rates

remain firmly

he nar-

in the third person.

The Advantages of Omniscience:

In a sense, omniscient nar-

HOW

50 ration

the

TO ANALYZE FICTION

most natural of

all narrative techniques. After all, with regard to his work, omniscient. Any pretense to limitations on his knowledge of the characters he has himself created is clearly artificial. And because omniscient narration is the most natural form, it may be for many writers the most comfortable form. is

the author

is,

In addition, omniscient narration

is

a highly flexible technique.

As we have suggested, tually no limits to what

in

can always give us no other concern.

what the story demands and need have

just

omniscient narration, there are virthe omniscient narrator can tell us. He

The Disadvantages of Omniscience: Although omniscient narration is, in one sense, a particularly natural technique, it is in another sense an especially unnatural one. For in life, after 'all, there are no omniscient people. The narrator who knows and tells as much as he likes is purely a convention of literature. For those who regard "naturalness" as a virtue in literature, then, omniscience is not always the most desirable technique. Furthermore, the very

omniscient narration, while can present problems. In the hands of an insufficiently disciplined writer, omniscient narration can tend to looseness and incoherence, since the technique does not impose discipline on a writer. certainly a virtue in

flexibility of

itself,

LIMITED NARRATION: rator

is

ration

is

The

the limited narrator.

always

artificial,

alternative to the omniscient nar-

As has been

implied, limited nar-

since there are in truth

no

limits to

an author's knowledge of his own creation. Still, art is in part a matter of artifice, and the artifice of limited narration offers a number of advantages to the writer of fiction. It also has its disadvantages, of course, and

we

shall

examine some of them as

well.

THE NARRATOR:

who told

doesn't

know

The

limited narrator

everything.

is,

simply, a narrator

He may appear

from the inside (first-person narration) and

from the outside (third-person narration).

It

is

both

in stories

in stories told

when we

turn

view begins to take on major importance. In a sense, the omniscient author to the limited narrator that the matter of point of

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

51

has no point of view. Able to observe the action from all sides at once, and not personally involved in it, he simply sees things as they are at least, as they are in the imaginary world of the



story.

The omniscient narrator, like God, Protagonist as Narrator: has no point of view. But characters, like people, have points of view. And when the story is told, not by an omniscient narrator serenely and disinterestedly viewing the action from above, but by one of the characters, then we may clearly say the story from a particular point of view.

is

told

The

story

may

be

it is

only what he sees, and

we

The use vantages. of

life,

by the protagonist or main from his point of view. We see

told, for instance,

character. In that case,

told

see

it

only as he sees

it.

of the protagonist as narrator has certain obvious adIt

corresponds very closely to the reader's experience

for each of us

is

the protagonist in a first-person story.

Like the narrator-protagonist we know ourselves from the inside, others only from the outside. I know my own thoughts directly. The thoughts of others I must infer from their words and actions. Therefore, the use of the protagonist as narrator, telling his own story in the first person, has the advantages of

immediacy and the sense of

life.

A

method

it can make a posiwork. That he must include in his story only what the narrator can be expected to know gives the author a valuable principle of selection and helps him to avoid the looseness sometimes associated with om-

further advantage of this

is

that

tive contribution to the overall unity of the

niscient narration.

The advantages

of telling the story

some of method. What in some

the protagonist suggest

with the

immediacy,

intensity,

unfortunate restriction.

from the point of view of

the disadvantages connected

may

stories

and unity can

in

be a source of be simply an

others

The author may be

frustrated to find

may be expected to know. If he has chosen his point of view unwisely, the author may resort excessively to tricks for introducing additional information. He may, for instance, rely too heavily on that he can include in the story only

what

his narrator

HOW

52

TO ANALYZE FICTION

letters, telephone calls, and conversations between his protagonist-narrator and other characters to convey information. All of these devices are legitimate in themselves, but excessive

reliance

on them becomes too obviously a mechanical solution problem, distracting our attention from the story

to a technical

to the author's difficulties in writing

it.

There are also problems that arise from the fact that in a story told by the protagonist we are in a sense locked within the

mind of

the protagonist. This

is

not in

method may not be

itself

a flaw, but

sug-

it

For moral judgment of the protagonist is difficult to handle in a story told by the protagonist, unless the reader can be convinced that the protagonist is more given than most of us to self-analysis and self-evaluation. Even Henry James, one of the masters of point of view, fails in his story "The Aspern Papers" to solve the problem of how to incorporate a moral attitude towards the protagonist into a story told by the protagonist. We are left, in this generally remarkable story, with the sense that James has tried to make this point of view do gests that this

suitable to all subjects.

instance,

more than

it

can.

Protagonist as Viewpoint Character: point of view

we have been

Closely related to the

that associated with "third-person limited" narration. In this technique the story is told from the outside by a narrator who, like the omniscient

discussing

is

not himself a character in the story he narrates. the narrator is not omniscient. In the form of third-person limited we are now concerned with, the narrator knows all there is to know about one character. Beyond that, he knows only what this one character knows. The controlling point of view is that of the character, who is therefore referred to by critics as the viewpoint narrator,

But

is

in the third-person limited technique,

character.

The viewpoint character may be the protagonist, in which case this method is very close to the first-person technique discussed above. The principal difference is that in the first-person technique narrator and protagonist are one and the same, while

in

the third-person technique they remain clearly distinguished.

This difference has important implications. The narrator

in

a

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

53

is always more or less detached from This detachment presents an opportunity for kinds of irony, evaluation, interpretation not possible in first-person narration. Consider, for instance, the following brief passage from Henry James's novel The Ambassadors. "Strether" is Lambert Strether, the novel's protagonist and view-

third-person limited story the viewpoint character.

point character:

Many

things came over him, and one of them was that he should doubtless presently know whether he had been shallow or sharp. Another was that the balcony in question didn't somehow show as a convenience easy to surrender. Poor Strether had at this very moment to recognize

the

truth

that,

wherever one paused

imagination, before one could stop

it,

in

Paris,

the

reacted.

There is nothing in the first two sentences of this passage that could not, with the necessary changes in grammatical form, be included in a story told in the first person. But at the word "Poor," the first word in the third sentence, narrator and viewpoint character part company. "Poor"

ment on

the viewpoint character,

and

is

this

the narrator's

kind of

com-

comment

is,

of course, impossible in first-person narration.

Apart from this important distinction, the two points of view have much in common and share many of the same advantages and disadvantages. In third-person limited, the author must restrict himself to what might be known by his viewpoint character, and this can be either a valuable discipline or a frustrating restriction, depending on the temperament of the author and the nature of his material.

Minor Character Viewpoint:

The

character selected as nar-

rator or viewpoint character need not be the protagonist. roles

may

also be

assumed by characters of

These

lesser importance.

Minor character viewpoint obviously has many of the same advantages and disadvantages as major character viewpoint, whether first-person or third-person limited. There is the additional problem that telling the story from the point of view of a minor character requires a special sort of justification. If a story is at all interesting, the protagonist's point of view should be interesting, since

he

is

the central character in the story.

But what

HOW

54

TO ANALYZE FICTION

makes a minor character's point of view interesting? The answer must be that his point of view allows us to see facets of the situation that we would otherwise miss. In The Great Gatsby, for instance, the narrator's ambiguous relation to the sophisticated society of East Egg makes him an especially perceptive and valuable commentator on the action of the novel.

Objective Viewpoint: An external instance of limited narration occurs when the narrator is not permitted to know directly the thoughts of any of the characters. He can observe only what becomes external in word and action. This technique is sometimes referred to as the objective viewpoint (some critics prefer the term "dramatic" ). striking instance of the ob-

A

jective viewpoint

maintained with unusual rigor throughout an entire story is Ernest Hemingway's "The Killers"; Hemingway is in general a master of the objective viewpoint.

Given the

right kind of subject, as in "The Killers," the obviewpoint can have great force. But its refusal to deal directly with the inner life is a serious limitation, since it is thus obviously not suited to many of the subjects great writers of fiction have considered most important.

jective

COMBINATIONS:

The

are the omniscient

basic points of view in fiction, then,

and the

limited.

The

limited

may

involve

or third-person narration; the narrator or viewpoint character may be either a major or minor character in the either

first

story;

an extreme form of the limited point of view

is

the so-

called objective viewpoint.

Now

these different points of view

may appear

in

combination

same story. In fact, a work of fiction that is as a whole an example of omniscient narration will usually include all or most of the other points of view as well. That is, at some point in the

in

his narrative,

externals point.

and

the omniscient narrator will

will

simply describe

therefore be assuming the objective view-

At another moment, the narrator

will

present a scene to

us from the point of view of one of the characters and will therefore employ third-person limited narration.

MULTIPLE VIEWPOINTS: tion of different point of

Not to be confused with a combinaview techniques is the use of multiple

HOW viewpoints,

which

is

TO ANALYZE FICTION actually

55

a particular application of the

An

important example is William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying. Part by part, Faulkner's consistent use of the limited point of view is clear. At any given moment in the novel the action is being seen from the point of view of a single character. We see only what that character sees and as that character sees it. But the novel as a whole contains no less than sixteen viewpoint characters; we see the action from the point of view of each one in turn. limited point of view.

A

on the use of multiple viewpoints is the so-called made up entirely of letters written by the characters. Samuel Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe and Tobias Smollett's Humphrey Clinker are two of the greatest variation

epistolary novel, the novel

English epistolary novels.

POINT OF VIEW

AND MEANING:

Treated in isolation from

the other elements of literature, point of view

may seem

to the

inexperienced reader a narrowly technical concern. After all, it may be objected, it's the story that counts and not the point of view from which

it

is

told.

But

this objection is unsound, for story and point of view are not truly distinct entities. Would the same story, told from

another point of view, be just as good? The truth seems to be that you can't tell the same story from another point of view. Change the point of view and you change the story.

Imagine "The Killers" retold as a first-person story with Ole and narrator. Would it still be the same story? Surely not. Nor would The Great Gatsby be the same story if it were told by an uninvolved omniscient narrator, rather than by the sensitive and sympathetic Nick. as protagonist

And when we come

As I Lay Dying or Lawrence seems almost fair to say that the point of view is the story. That is, it is precisely our awareness of the different shapes experience can assume in different minds that suggests the central meaning of such works. to

works

Durrell's Alexandria Quartet,

Some

lfke it

writers have even used point of view to dramatize failures

of understanding.

In

Ford Madox Ford's novel The Good

HOW

56 Soldier,

the

protagonist-narrator

events he relates.

perience

is

TO ANALYZE FICTION

And

is

unable to understand the

his inability to find

precisely the point, the

meaning

meaning in his exif you will, of the

novel.

The choice

of one point of view over another

or philosophical meaning

in itself.

The

writer

may have moral who turns to the

limited point of view may by his choice be expressing, whether consciously or not. his doubts of the possibility of ever knowing

anything as

from which

is

it

it

is

in

itself,

independent of the point of view

seen.

AND CHOICE: We return once again to theme of choice. You have been invited throughout this book to regard the work of fiction as a complex but unified form determined by a series of choices made by the author in

POINT OF VIEW the

is always omnisBut he may choose, for the sake of his story to act as though he were not omniscient. And this choice, as much as any other made by the writer of fiction, has formal, moral, and philosophical significance. It is, then, not "merely a matter of technique"' (whatever that may mean) but part of the meaning

the process of composition. In truth, the author

cient.

of fiction.

CHAPTER

STYLE

5

AND TONE

INTRODUCTION:

Although each of the topics discussed earlier book concerned us specifically as an element of fiction, no one of them is relevant only to fiction. Much of what we in

this

say of plot in fiction, for instance, in

is

equally applicable to plot

drama.

At the same time no one of these topics is applicable to all literature. There is, for instance, no "plot" in the usual

forms of

sense in a lyric

The

topics

we

arc qualities of

poem

or essay.

shall discuss in this chapter, all

literary

forms

on the other hand,

— one might almost

say of

all

uses of language. Every literary work, at least, possesses the qualities of style this

chapter

is

and tone. What we

shall

be concerned with in and tone to the

the particular relevance of style

analysis of fiction.

STYLE RELATION OF STYLE TO TONE:

As we

of this chapter, the role of style in a

shall see in the

work

of fiction

portant and complex one. But none of the effects ute

to

style

is

more important than

as the

means, tone as the end.

We

we may

contribution

its

establishment of tone. In this relationship

is

course an imattrib-

we may regard

shall first

the

to

style

examine the nature

of the means.

STYLE: We must first be aware that the term number of meanings. When we speak of the "Attic style," for instance, we are speaking of a literary tendency that has flourished especially in some periods, but may be discov-

MEANING OF "style" has a

ered

in

styles, "

any period. characteristic

On

other

the

hand,

there

of one historical period

found to any significant extent

in

57

any other.

are

"period

and not

to

be

HOW

58

We

more concerned with individual style, we would be wise

are

way

TO ANALYZE FICTION the single writer's

of using language, but

to remember that the full understanding of an individual writer's style may involve

seeing that style in the context of the general style of his period and of recurrent literary tendencies. The style of the great English essayist Sir Francis Bacon, for example, may best be

examined

for

its

own

qualities

relation to the Attic style

and

by one

who can

recognize

its

to English prose of the later six-

teenth and earlier seventeenth centuries in general.

Even when we have agreed our specific concern is with indisome ambiguities remain. If the complaint is made that a writer has no style, style seems to mean a generally desirable literary quality that some writers have, while others do not. If, on the other hand, we hear that Theodore Dreiser or James T. Farrell is an unsatisfactory stylist, we may conclude vidual style,

that

all

writers have style, but that not

all

styles are satisfactory.

if a critic undertakes an analysis of, say, Henrv James's he may find evaluation impossible. After all, Henry James's style is undeniably Henry James's style. That is, style may simply mean a writer's characteristic way of using language. It is in this sense that all writers have style. And who can say that one man's style (say Dreiser's) is inferior to another's (say James's)? Isn't it possible, after all, that one style in this sense is never better or worse than another, but only

Finally,

style,

different

from

it?

AND STANDARDS: The usual purposes of literary analydemand that we be able to describe and to evaluate the material we are examining. To describe, first of all. It is then desirable that we isolate at once the particular qualities of a

STYLE sis

writer's style without attempting to judge either the individual qualities or the style as a whole.

With a writer

like Dreiser, for

example, we must try to understand his style on its own terms, without being in too great a hurry to impose on it our notions of the kind of style we prefer. We should not condemn Dreiser simply because he is not Henry James. Neither, if our tastes tend in a different direction, should we condemn Henry James for not being Dreiser. A large part of this chapter will be devoted to suggesting methods and vocabulary that should be helpful in analyzing a writer's style on its own terms.

HOW But

TO ANALYZE FICTION

in the discussion of literature,

the act of judgment.

A

number

we always come

59 at last to

of standards for evaluating style

have been suggested at one time or another. For some -critics economy is the supreme virtue; the writer must on no account use more words than are necessary. We may assent to this standard in a general way and still ask, "necessary to what?" Other critics prize concreteness above all else; yet we must recognize that the degree of concreteness in a given writer's may quite properly be determined by the overall design of

style

his

work.

What we

need, then,

is

a standard that will serve as a fairly

enough to prevent our what he quite properly never attempted. The only standard I have ever found that meets these conditions is appropriateness; the style must be appropriate. If I am asked, "appropriate to what?" I can only answer, "To everything else in the work." Style, then, like every element of fiction, must ultimately be judged by its contribution useful guide

condemning

and

still

remain

flexible

a writer for not achieving

to the artistic whole.

The assertion, "The style is the man," IS THE MAN: commonly made in literary criticism. This assertion is relev-

STYLE is

ant to our consideration of style in fiction. Part of our experi-

ence of the total work of fiction is our sense of the author, our awareness of and response to the qualities of his mind and personality. And the author reveals these qualities nowhere more clearly than in his style. For the choice of words and the arrangement of words into larger units such as the phrase, the sentence, the paragraph, are not merely mechanical processes. A writer's style can reveal to us his way of perceiving experience and of organizing his perceptions. The differences in style between a Dreiser and a James are ultimately differences of mind and personality.

may

be objected that the style of many writers, including many best-selling novels and of stories in widely read magazines, is nothing more than a matter of formula. How can a formula reveal an individual writer's qualities of mind and personality? But doesn't one writer's willing submission to formula reveal such qualities as well as another writer's resistance to formula?

But

it

the authors of

HOW

60 STYLE

AND

UNITY:

TO ANALYZE FICTION Unity of

to give total unity to a lyric

style in itself

may

be

sufficient

poem

or to a familiar essay, for in these forms the direct expression of a mind or personality is precisely what the work is all about. But fiction, although it may express the mind and personality of its author, does so indirectly.

Making

a plot

not,

is

after

a direct form of

all,

not sufficient to unify a work of fiction in which the other elements are incoherent. But style can work in co-operation with the other elements of fiction to produce a final unity. loosely, though not incoherently, plotted novel like The Sun Also Rises benefits especially

self-expression. Style alone, therefore,

is

A

from the unity of

style that reflects the controlling

personality of Ernest

mind and

Hemingway.

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE:

By

ture of literature, the author's

style

way

we mean

the verbal tex-

of using language. In short,

we mean everything the author does with words, including his way of arranging words into such larger units as sentences. For purposes of simplification, we shall consider this topic under three headings: diction, imagery,

and syntax.

DICTION

By

diction is meant simply the author's choice of words. Our purpose in the analysis of diction is to recognize the choices the author has made and to infer when possible the reasons for which the choices have been made. Our assumption is that any choice may be significant and that the sum of choices in a whole work will certainly be so. As we turn our attention from the diction of a brief passage to that of an entire story or novel, we look for the author's guiding principles of selection, for hints of a pattern in the choices he has made. We may undertake the same kind of investigation of the diction in the total body of a writer's work, seeking to discover what kind of choices the writer habitually

makes and

for

what reasons.

DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION:

The

analysis of diction

always leads to some consideration of the denotations and connotations of the words chosen by the author. A word's denotation is simply its dictionary meaning; its connotations are the suggestions and associations aroused by it. A number of different words may have essentially the same denotation, while

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

differing significantly in their connotations.

Is

61 a

man who

re-

veals the shady activities of his business associates to an investigating agency a "stool pigeon" or "an honest man doing his duty as a citizen?" The difference between the two terms, and it is certainly considerable, is largely a matter of connotation. The first term suggests contempt, the second suggests admiration. Connotations may, of course, be used in far more subtle ways than this.

A

first question we may ask in any particular analysis is, to what extent does the writer exploit the suggestive powers of language based on the connotations of words? Some writers, we will discover, choose a diction in which there is a minimum of suggestion or connotation and maximum of statement or denotation. Other writers seem almost to make suggestiveness their

only principle of selection. The suggestiveness or lack of it in a given writer's diction will, however, always be relative. lan-

A

guage absolutely without connotation is impossible in fiction, and a language absolutely without denotation is no language at

all.

Denotation— An Example from Swift: The diction of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift may seem to take little advantage of the suggestive powers of language. Here, for instance, is a passage describing the

He

Emperor

of Lilliput:

by almost the breadth of my nail, than any is enough to strike an awe into the beholders. His features are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip and arched nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful, and his deportment mais

taller,

of his court, which alone

jestic.

This is about as close to pure denotation as we can expect a passage of prose fiction to come. The meaning of the passage is little more than the sum total of the dictionary meanings of the

words

Why

that

make

it

up.

should a writer so purify his language of the suggestive-

ness that other writers strain to achieve? There are a of reasons for the series of choices Swift

makes

in this

number passage.

HOW

62

Some

TO ANALYZE FICTION

of these reasons have to

of prose in the

first

do with period

style, the

half of the eighteenth century.

We

norm

shall not

here enter into a dissertation upon this subject.

Even

to a reader familiar with the period style Swift's diction

seems unusually pure of connotations. Let us note

as a partial

explanation that Swift's plot, involving at this point Gulliver's adventures in a land whose inhabitants are approximately onethe size of normal human beings, is itself fantastic. Perhaps Swift felt that the greatest sobriety of style was necessary if the audience was to accept the fantasy. twelfth

Further, Gulliver's Travels employs a first-person narrator.

may therefore be seen character. He is, in spite of

plainness of the diction this

narrator's

ventures, not a very imaginative

The

as a reflection of his

fantastic

ad-

man.

Swift was deeply suspicious and fearful of the irraelements in human character, and this attitude is reflected throughout Gulliver's Travels. The suggestiveness of language is not based primarily on reason, and the writer who exploits it is therefore appealing to the non-rational side of man's nature. Such an appeal would violate Swift's purpose in his satirical narrative, which is to encourage men to act more Finally, tional

reasonably. in Swift's diction, then, seems based both on the needs of the work and on the qualities of Swift's mind and personality.

The emphasis on denotation

Connotation— An Example from Poe: The American Edgar Allan Poe is a very different sort of writer. Here is the first sentence of his famous story "The Fall of the House of Usher." During the whole of a the

autumn

of the year,

dull, dark,

when

and soundless day

the clouds

in

hung oppressively

low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

The

diction here

is

characterized by the vagueness of denota-

HOW tion. Just

how low

is

TO ANALYZE FICTION

63

"oppressively low"? What, precisely, does

And how can a house be "melancholy," since the dictionary meaning of the adjective has to do with a human emotional state. a "dreary tract of country" look like?

In short, Poe tions,

is

choosing his words primarily for their connota-

for their suggestive power. His

and temperament.

legitimate as Swift's

and

his

A Combination— An Example come tion.

method is, demands

as suited to the

in

itself,

as

of his story

from Thackeray: Swift and Poe and suggestion in dic-

close to the extremes of statement

Few

writers go so far in either direction.

A

diction relying

more on connotation than that of Swift and more on denotation than that of Poe is closer to the norm. In the following passage from Thackeray's Vanity

Fair, connotations reinforce the gen-

eral drift of denotations.

Mr. Osborne and

his

daughters are

about to go to dinner:

The obedient bell in the lower regions began ringing the announcement of the meal. The tolling over, the head of the family thrust his hands into the great tail-pockets of his great blue coat with brass buttons,

for

a

further

announcement,

scowling over his shoulder

strode

at the

and without waiting downstairs

alone,

four females.

Thackeray's control of connotations contributes to our sense of Mr. Osborne's dictatorial nature. He is referred to, not by name or as "father," but as "the head of the family"; the phrase suggests authority. And by speaking of "the four females," rather than "daughters," Thackeray avoids all suggestion of familial

warmth and intimacy. And

that the bell

is

it

is,

of course, significant

not merely punctual, but "obedient."

In discussing the passages from Swift and Poe, we concentrated on the significance of denotation and connotation for the work as a whole. The passage from Thackeray exhibits a controlled suggestiveness working within an individual passage to provide insight into character and into the quality of the situation. These selections and our discussion of them should give some indication of the importance of the author's choice of words and of the power that rests in the suggestiveness of words.

HOW

64

TO ANALYZE FICTION

IMAGERY The

dividing line between diction and imagery is difficult to draw, for images are made of words and a single word can be an image. Furthermore, the terms "image" and "imagery" themselves, like most widely used critical terms, may take on different meanings in different contexts. In our discussion an image is the evocation through words of a sensory experience; imagery is simply the collection of images in the entire work or in any significant part of the work.

LITERAL IMAGES: Images may be either literal or figurative. A literal image involves no necessary change or extension in the meaning of the words. Swift's reference to the Emperor of Lilliput's "arched nose" is an example of a literal image. Since fiction deals with people, places, and things, and their relationships in action,

A

must depend heavily on imagery is simply

it

basic function of literal

reader's

how

demand

literal

to

imagery.

satisfy

for specific, concrete detail, his desire to

things look, sound, smell, taste, and feel.

to the vivid representation of experience that

It

the

know

contributes

we expect from

the best fiction.

RECURRENT IMAGES:

While remaining literal in each indian added contribution to the

vidual instance, images

may make

total design of a story

if

they recur frequently in the story. In

William Faulkner's short story "Dry September" there are a number of images of dryness. For the most part, the individual images are perfectly literal. It has not rained for a long time, and the land is parched and dry. Yet by their frequent recurrence, the images take on a suggestive power, arousing associations with barrenness, sterility, impotence, and frustration, all of which are relevant to the story's meaning.

Recurrent imagery may consist of a number of repetitions of same image or the frequent occurrence of images that, while not identical, all relate to a single theme. The images may be entirely literal or may be a mixture of the literal and figurative. the

FIGURATIVE IMAGES: Figurative images are sometimes called "tropes" or, more commonly, "figures of speech." An image is

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

65

when

it must be understood in some sense other than Robert Burns's "My love is like a red, red rose" is an example of a figurative image, since the love cannot literally

figurative

the

literal.

be like a rose.

The

from Burns is an example of a particular kind of image called a simile. A simile is an explicit comparison of dissimilar objects (love and roses), involving the use of such comparative words as "like" or "as." A bolder figure is metaphor in which, because the comparison remains implicit, the statement seems to assert an identification. If Burns had said "My love is a rose," this would have been metaphor. line

figurative

The frequency with which

a writer resorts to figurative imagery an important quality of style. Jonathan Swift and Ernest Hemingway are two writers, obviously dissimilar in many ways, who are alike in that they make sparing use of figurative imagery. Thomas Wolfe, on the other hand, is an example of a writer of fiction in whose style figurative imagery is a major element. The stylistic austerity of Swift and Hemingway reflects the austerity with which they view human experience. Wolfe's is

highly figurative style, involving the frequent uniting of dissimilar objects

and sensations, suggests

his

openness to a wide range

of experience.

Figurative imagery used recurrently

Stephen Crane's novel The frequently

compared

is

likely to

Red Badge

to brute animals.

be

significant. In

of Courage,

men

The recurrence

are

of this

kind of comparison suggests a skepticism, important to the novel's meaning, about the supposed uniqueness ol man's place in the universe. It seems to be implied that man is essentially an animal, driven blindly, like other animals, by his instincts,

and not the rational being, acting on the basis of "values" and principles," that he likes to imagine himself. is not merely ornamental an integral part of the total meaning of the work. The rarity of figurative language in Hemingway, like its abundance in Wolfe, is impressive because of its appropriateness to the whole structure of the work. The particular pattern of recurrent imagery in The Red Badge of Courage is an important key to that novel's meaning. We may well be pleased by vividness

In the best fiction figurative imagery

but

is

HOW

66 and

TO ANALYZE FICTION

originality in imagery, but the ultimate question

"What does

it

always,

is

contribute to the work?"

A symbol is basically a kind of image, differing from other images in the use to which it is put. Because sym-

SYMBOLS:

bolism often proves a stumbling block for inexperienced read-

we

ers,

shall

approach the subject of the

literary

symbol

indirectly.

We

are all familiar with one kind of symbolism, the kind we language. For words are symbols of their referents, of the things they refer to. The word "tree" symbolizes a class of

call

material objects.

We don't have a simple discourse on familiar topics, we must resort frequently to modifiers. Note how many modifiers I have used in the preceding sentence. I But as a symbolic system, language

name

had

Even

for everything.

in

to attach "relatively simple

have a single name



a

symbol

,,

is

limited.

relatively

to "discourse" because



for the thing

I

had

in

we

don't

mind.

But even with the help of modifiers, there are many things that cannot be talked about as you know, if an experience has ever left you speechless. For we have by no means succeeded



in

embodying

Now those literal

all

of

human

experience

in

language.

a literary symbol is simply the author's attempt to name many areas of human experience that ordinary language, or figurative,

we mean by

the

is

inadequate to deal with. This

more formal

definitions of the

is

all

that

symbol we may

attempt that the symbol, while an additional "level of meaning" beyond that reality. The writer's use of symbols is continuous with the process of language that we use occasionally.

It

is

in this

evoking a concrete, objective

reality, also suggests

know.

An Example from

Melville:

Herman

Melville's

Moby Dick

widely regarded as one of the greatest symbolic novels. In reading a work like Moby Dick it is important to remember that the white whale does not "stand for" something that can be neatly stated in other words. Rather, Moby Dick names a whole range of experience and perceptions of experience that is

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

67

had never been named before, and for which we the one Melville gave it.

still

have no

name other than

Moby Dick

is

an instance of a novel essentially symbolic

The symbol may, of course, play given work of fiction. The green light in design.

in its

a less central role in a

Fitzgerald's The Great an example of a symbol employed to extend the significance of the novel's non-symbolic action.

Gatsby

As

is

discussion indicates, the symbol, although related to image, may transcend the limitations of "style" in the limited sense we have been using the term to become the major structural principle of the work. But if we remind ourselves that style is the reflection of the author's way of perceiving and of organizing his perceptions, we can see that even a symbol of this

the

the magnitude of Melville's whale remains related to the con-

cept of style.

SYNTAX To move from

the symbolic resonance of the white whale to

may seem a crashing antiwhich the writer constructs an element of style as any we have

the frequency of subordinate clauses

climax. Yet syntax, or the his sentences,

is

as essential

way

in

been discussing.

we concern ourselves with such matters as the characteristic length of his sentences, the proportion of simple to complex sentences, and so on. These

In analyzing a writer's syntax,

matters are by no means so trivial as they may at first appear. If the sentences of Henry James are characteristically longer

and more complicated in structure than those of Ernest Hemingway, this reflects each writer's personal vision of life. For James the perception of experience is a matter of the close observation of fine distinctions; the embodiment of such a vision in prose requires complexity of syntax.

To

rewrite a story

by James in the syntax of Hemingway (or the other way around) would be to change the nature and meaning of the experience.

STYLE

AND

FIRST-PERSON NARRATION: work of

in the analysis of style arises in the

A

special

fiction that

problem employs

HOW

68

TO ANALYZE FICTION

which the reader is confronted properly to be considered that of the author or of the narrator? Is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written in

first-person narration. Is the style with

the style of

Mark Twain or of Huck Finn? Is Lolita written Nabokov or of Humbert Humbert?

in

the style of Vladimir

The answer The style of

is

easy to formulate,

if

not always so easy to apply.

first person may be thought of as the style of the author so adapted as to reflect the character of the narrator. Our sense of the degree of adaptation employed in a particular work will, of course, be more or less sure according to the number of other works by the same author we are familiar with. The reader who has read most of the fiction of Mark Twain will have a pretty good notion of

a

work

of fiction narrated in the

where Mark Twain leaves

off

and Huckleberry Finn begins.

As a general rule, moreover, we may expect an author to have more than a little in common with the character he chooses as narrator. The boxing trainer who narrates Hemingway's story "Fifty Grand" would never have been used as a narrator by Henry James, simply because James could never have felt his way into the mind of a character so different from himself. And if Huck Finn is younger and more naive than Mark Twain, he that

by instinct at the kind of perceptions had become Twain's by long experience in observing hu-

man

nature.

pretty consistently arrives

We may

expect, then, that there will be a consist-

ency between the style of the author and the narrator he is likely to employ.

style

of the

TONE We have, for the most part, been considering style as a selfcontained topic. But earlier in this chapter it was pointed out that one of the most important functions of style is its contribution to the establishment of tone in the work of fiction. What, then, do we mean by tone in fiction? Perhaps the meaning of this term will become clearer if we think

DEFINING TONE: first

of a

more

familiar sense of tone



that

is,

the

sense

in

which we speak of tone of voice.

We

recognize that in spoken English the same words

may add

HOW up

TO ANALYZE FICTION

compliment or an

to a

69

Consider, for instance, the

insult.

phrase, "Nice work." Say this in one tone of voice, and praise; say

By

we mean

tone, then,

language,

an

it's

it's

insult.

the expression of attitudes. In spoken

primarily the intonation of the voice (just

is

it

another, and

in

it

how

one says, "Nice work") that reveals the tone and thereby suggests the attitude. In written language, including the language of fiction, tone

is

that quality, primarily a quality of style, that

reveals the attitudes of the author toward his subject

and toward

his audience.

An Example from O'Connor:

Let us consider, for instance,

For the

the subject of the loss of religious faith.

religious per-

son, or for the person capable, whatever his personal beliefs,

experience seriously, this is certainly an important subject. With this in mind, examine the following sentence: "My pal Mick Dowling started losing his faith very early, when he wasn't more than eighteen." of taking religious

The sentence quoted is the chors" by Frank O'Connor.

we

see that

mon

it

this

If

we look

suggests that the loss of religious faith

experience; what

through

sentence from the story "Anclosely at this sentence,

first

is

singular about

Mick

is

is

a

that he

comwent

experience rather earlier than most. In short, the

subject of the loss of religious faith, which certainly lends itself

an intensely serious treatment, is in this story not treated all. Rather, it is treated simply as something, like baldness or matrimony, that happens to most men sooner to

very seriously at

or

later.

The expression ward

in the story of

the loss of faith

is

O'Connor's casual attitude

to-

And

in

a matter of tone.

turn dependent on matters of style. started losing his faith very early. that there

sooner or

is

.

.

"My

."

The

a time for losing one's faith;

later,

and

in

Mick's case

it

pal

the tone

is

Mick Dowling

suggestion

is

clearly

bound to come comes sooner. The it

is

author's attitude toward this potentially shattering experience is

one of easy, relaxed tolerance.

But in this sentence the author establishes his attitude, not only toward his subject, but also toward the reader. "Look here,"

HOW

70

TO ANALYZE FICTION

he seems to say. "We're sophisticated adults. We know that religious faith is something one inevitably loses; the only question is when. At any rate, it's nothing to get very excited about."

Not

readers will be able to accept O'Connor's attitude; for

all

some,

simply be too flippant on a subject they take very O'Connor's attitude easily, because they confuse it with their own attitude (not O'Connor's) of contempt for religious faith. Still others will accept O'Connor's attitude because it is their own. And some will accept O'Connor's attitude, not because it is their own or because they confuse it with their own, but because they see it as an attitude which, however limited, may yet reveal something valuable about the subject. it

will

seriously. Others will accept

Whether one accepts or

atti-

tude

And

tone

is is

rejects an author's attitude, that revealed to us primarily in fiction through tone.

dependent on

style, that is,

on what the author does with

language.

UNDERSTATEMENT:

In particular, the sentence from O'Con-

an example of understatement. That is, O'Connor treats his subject less seriously than most writers would. Understatement has been much favored by modern authors. It seems particularly suited to the contemporary distrust of absolutes. The author who understates does not commit himself very firmly to anything. The particular tact of O'Connor's opening sentence is that it does not take a stand for or against religious nor's story

is

faith or the loss of it. Faith and apostasy are presented as elements of human experience, neutral in themselves, but equally

available to the writer of fiction.

Understatement a

way

may

be, as

it is

Frank O'Connor, do not mean this as a con-

in the style of

of avoiding commitments. (I

demnation.) On the other hand, the use of understatement be a way of calling on the reader to react with the full power of his moral imagination. The austere, non-figurative style of Ernest Hemingway is a version of understatement, but its effect is quite different from the understatement of O'Connor. When, in his story "A Way You'll Never Be," Hemingway describes, without the slightest expression of moral outrage, the proper technique of rape, his purpose is certainly not to suggest

may

HOW that rape

is

TO ANALYZE FICTION

a trivial matter.

On

71

the contrary, he forces us to

see that in a brutal world a deadening of the moral sense

necessary to survival and that this

ment of the

brutality

may be

we have come,

in

is

the ultimate indict-

our time, to take for

becomes a means of arousing complete moral response of which Heming-

granted. Understatement, then,

in the reader the way's characters are no longer capable.

IRONY:

Closely related to understatement, but

focused, fiction

what

We

is

more

clearly

the tone critics usually refer to as "irony." Irony in

is

consists of a discrepancy

suggested. Irony in

say the opposite of what

function as a

way

its

between what

is

stated

and

crudest form becomes sarcasm.

we mean:

the

words "Nice work,"

of saying, "You've really botched

it

this

time."

The

writer of fiction occasionally resorts to sarcasm, but, if he a writer of any distinction, his irony is likely to be more subtle. In Gulliver's Travels the King of Brobdingnag, the land is

of giants,

is

appalled at Gulliver's boastful description of the

weapons of destruction devised by Europeans. "A strange effect of narrow principles and short views" is Gulliver's comment. The reader is expected to see that the true narrow principles and short views are those of Gulliver and his fellow Europeans.

HYPERBOLE:

The opposite of understatement is hyperbole, or exaggeration used for rhetorical effect. When, at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens refers to the period of the French Revolution as "the best of times" and "the worst of is indulging in hyperbole. The effect of hyperbole in this particular instance and in many others in fiction is a dramatic heightening. We know that no one time can truly be times," he

singled

out as "best" or "worst," but

may seem

we

recognize

that

a

be one or the other, or both simultaneously, to those living through it.

given period

to

Hemingway is given to understatement and Dickens to hyperbole. Most writers fall somewhere in between, exemplifying what we may call the middle style. The aim of the middle style is to present a fair and accurate picture THE MIDDLE STYLE:

of things as they are.

Among modern American

novels Fitz-

HOW

72

TO ANALYZE FICTION

The Great Gatsby may be mentioned example of the middle style.

gerald's

as a superlative

Because it avoids extremes, the middle style may seem a kind of ideal. But the avoidance of extremes is not necessarily the highest of literary values. should sorely miss the work of

We

such "extremists" as Hemingway, Faulkner, Dickens, and Dostoevsky.

SENTIMENTALITY:

Failures in tone occur

of the author seems sented.

Such

somehow inadequate

failures often take the

when

the

attitude

to the material pre-

form of sentimentality, the

attempt to impose upon the material a greater emotional burden than it can comfortably bear. The death of Little Nell, in Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop, is a classic example of sen-

Because Nell

timentality.

is

a

purely

artificial

figure,

more up

idealized doll than child, the emotion Dickens tries to stir

by her death

American

is

excessive. Bret Harte

and O. Henry are two

writers often accused of sentimentality.

Although sentimentality usually involves some exaggeration, it should not be confused with legitimate uses of hyperbole. The line between legitimate and illegitimate exaggeration is, however, not always clear, and intelligent readers may sometimes disagree in their evaluation of particular passages. is

whether exaggeration

tion in the

work

INHIBITION:

is

justified

The question

by context or by

its

func-

as a whole.

Another kind of

failure of tone

is

inhibition, the

author's failure to give due emotional weight to his material. In

our time the example of Hemingway has led many lesser writers to an inappropriate use of understatement. In Hemingway's best work, understatement is a form of compression, releasing a powerful emotional impact. In many of Hemingway's imitators, understatement seems merely the admission of emotional sterility. Recognizing again the possibility of honest disagreement, I would mention John Hersey's A Bell for Adano and much of the more recent work of John O'Hara as examples of inhibition. James Gould Cozzens' controversial novel of a few years back, By Love Possessed, also seems to me to fail on grounds of inhibition. Cozzens, of course, is more in the tradition of James than of Hemingway, but the intricacy and

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

introspection of the Jamesian

manner can

73

also degenerate into

inhibition.

CONCLUSION:

The present chapter

has,

of necessity,

only

scratched the surface of the closely related topics of style and tone. Ultimately, only wide experience in reading fiction can turn a reader into a competent judge of style neglect these elements in analysis

of vitality in fiction.

is

and tone. But

to

to neglect the very sources

CHAPTER 6

STRUCTURE

AND TECHNIQUE

INTRODUCTION:

There are a number of elements of fiction while important in what they can contribute to the total work, are not easily classified under the general headings covthat,

ered in the earlier chapters of this book. This chapter is concerned with these elements, introduced under the properly vague categories of structure and technique. The same elements might with equal justice have been classified simply as "Miscellaneous."

DESCRIPTION

DEFINING DESCRIPTION: The first of elements we shall discuss is description. By

these

miscellaneous

description

we mean

the direct presentation of the qualities of a person, place, or thing.

For some, description extends

material qualities, as

when

to the presentation of

the author

tells

non-

us directly of the

moral nature of the character. In this chapter, however, description has a more limited meaning. It covers only the presentation of sensory qualities. The author is engaging in description if he tells us that a character is a tall man, but not if he tells us that a character is a good man. It is, of course, a proper part of description to suggest moral and spiritual qualities as these may seem to be embodied in physical details.

An Example from

Rather than continue to discuss let's look at an example of it. Here is a description of a character from Charles Dickens' B leak House: Dickens:

description at this abstract level,

Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man, with a fat smile, and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system Mr. Chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright. He is very much embarrassed about the

74

HOW arms, as

75

they were inconvenient to him, and he wanted

if

to grovel;

TO ANALYZE FICTION

much

very

is

in a perspiration

and never speaks without

first

about the head;

putting up his great hand,

as delivering a token to his hearers that he

is

going to

edify them.

This

is

brilliant description

on many counts.

It is, first

of

all,

a

presence of Mr. Chadband. But, more than this, without departing explicitly from description, the passage suggests a good deal about the character of of

rendition

vivid

physical

the

Mr. Chadband. does Dickens achieve his effects? We might note, for one is nothing haphazard about Dickens' choice of details. He makes no effort to tell us everything about Mr. Chadband's appearance. Rather, he concentrates on the oiliness and the awkwardness of the character. The second quality is suggested in images ("not unlike a bear," "as if ... he wanted

How

thing, that there

to

grovel")

human

Chadband's

And

Chadband

that in

this

hand

raising his

we

barely

qualifies

as

a

turn lends irony to the detail of

and Arrangement:

Selection then,

indicating

being.

as

if

about to edify his hearers.

In this passage of description,

see selection and arrangement at work. Effective de-

is not merely a matter of the writer's including all the he can think of. Rather, the writer must select those details most appropriate to his purpose and arrange these details so as to insure that his purpose is fulfilled.

scription

details

Description

is

a relatively static element in fiction. In the pas-

sage from Dickens, for instance, the story

comes

to a halt while

Dickens presents Mr. Chadband to us. But notice that Dickens includes movement ("Mr. Chadband moves softly and cum.") in his description, and that the last detail he brously includes, that of the raising of the hand, is well chosen to lead naturally back into action. Dickens forces us to wait expectantly for the edifying words of Mr. Chadband. .

The

.

description

of the

Emperor

of

Lilliput

from Gulliver's

Travels, quoted in the preceding chapter of this book, less vivid,

of

much more

Chadband. The

is

much

matter-of-fact, than Dickens' description

flatness of Swift's description

is,

of course,

HOW

76 not an

and

artistic flaw.

this

means

Swift

is

employing a first-person narrator,

may reveal at least narrator as about the person, place, or very matter-of-factness with which Gulliver

that passages of description

much about

the

thing described.

The

as

TO ANALYZE FICTION

describes so remarkable a figure as the liver's

stable

Emperor

suggests Gul-

and unimaginative personality.

is a matter of selection and arrangement based on the needs of the passage in itself and as part of the whole work. Although specifically concerned with physical details, good description may suggest nonmaterial qualities as well. Although descriptive passages are of their nature

Successful description then,

relatively static, the better writers of fiction will avoid too sharp

a sense of contrast between description and the dynamic de-

velopment of the narrative.

We

have concentrated on the passage devoted primarily or exis absorbed into the depiction of action. Most of what we have said of the descriptive passage applies with a few modifications to description so absorbed into narrative. clusively to description. Often, of course, description

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE SCENE: We turn now from description to ways of telling the story. A distinction commonly observed by critics is that between the panoramic and the scenic techniques. While these terms may not be familiar to the general reader, the techniques to which they refer

PANORAMA AND

narrative technique, to

certainly are.

Examples from Hawthorne: Rather than beginning our discussion by trying to define these terms abstractly, let's look again at two passages we discussed in relation to plot in the first chapter. These are the opening passages of Hawthorne's stories, "Young Goodman Brown" and "My Kinsman, Major Molineux." Here again is the passage from "Young Goodman Brown."

Young Goodman Brown came

forth at sunset into the

but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young

street at

Salem

village;

HOW wife.

And

own

pretty

TO ANALYZE FICTION

Faith, as the wife

head into the

with the pink

was

street,

aptly

77

named,

letting

ribbons of her cap while

the

thrust her

wind play

she Called to

Goodman Brown. This

is

scenic.

It

resembles

in

its

manner

of presentation a

scene from a play or movie. We are close to the particulars of action, in both a spatial and temporal sense. Spatially we are close enough to observe the wind playing with Faith's pink ribbons. Temporally, there

time

it

is

a close relationship between the

takes us to read of these actions and the time

it

takes

the characters to perform them.

Now neux.

let's

examine the opening of

"My Kinsmen, Major

Moli-

,,

After the kings of Great Britain had assumed the right of appointing the colonial governors, the measures of the latter seldom met with the ready and generous approbation which had been paid to those of their predecessors, under the original charters. The people looked with most jealous scrutiny to the exercise of power which did not emanate from themselves, and they usually rewarded their rulers with slender gratitude for the compliances by which, in softening their instructions from beyond the sea, they had incurred the reprehension of those who gave them. The annuals of Massachusetts Bay will inform us, that of six governors in the space of about forty years from the surrender of the old charter, under James II, two were imprisoned by a popular insurrection; a third, as Hutchinson inclines to believe, was driven from the province by the whizzing of a musket-ball; a fourth, in the opinion of the

same

historian,

was hastened

tinual bickerings with the

House

to his grave

by con-

of Representatives; and

the remaining two, as well as their successors, till the Revolution, were favored with few and brief intervals of

peaceful sway.

The

contrast between the panoramic technique employed here and the scenic technique of "Young Goodman Brown" should

be clear. In

"Young Goodman Brown" Hawthorne

presents

actions that take a few seconds to perform in a passage that takes a few seconds to read. In the passage from "My Kinsman,

HOW

78

TO ANALYZE FICTION

Major Molineux," he disposes of forty years (and six governors) in a single sentence. In "Brown" the physical setting is clearly presented and severely limited: the threshold of the home of Goodman Brown and his wife, Faith. In "Molineux" the physical setting

is

highly generalized: the colonies in general

in particular. The actions "Brown" are individual; those in "Molineux" are representative. The passage from "Brown" has the directness of dra-

and the Massachusetts Bay Colony

in

matic presentation; that from "Molineux" has the indirectness of narrative summary. In the passage from "Brown*' we are hardly aware of the narrator (the phrase "aptly named" is the only reminder of his presence); in "Molineux" we are inevitably conscious of the narrator as he who selects, compresses, and summarizes the events of a long period of time into a single paragraph. In this series of contrasts, we see the difference between scene and panorama. The difference is not always so clear-cut. A passage of narrative may be a good deal less generalized than the one we have been looking at from "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" and still be essentially panoramic. The essence of the

scenic

often

is

its

dialogue narrative

of moment-by-moment action, "Young Goodman Brown" the second paragraph. As a passage of

presentation

involving dialogue;

in

commences in a moves away from

these

qualities,

it

tends

toward

panorama.

The choice between the panoramic and scenic technique is then another of the important choices the writer of fiction must make. To understand something of what is involved in this let's consider some of the uses of the two techniques. must recognize at the outset that we shall usually find both techniques employed in a work of fiction, although some stories, for instance Hemingway's "The Killers," are entirely scenic.

choice,

We

The

entirely scenic novel

as a

Young Man and

tially

is

rare, but

Ulysses, both by

A

Portrait of the Artist

James Joyce,

are essen-

scenic throughout.

As the examples from Hawthorne illustrate, begin his story with a passage of either panorama or scene. Each method has its advantages. The scenic beginning is more likely to catch the reader's attention at once,

BEGINNINGS: the writer

may

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

79

its concreteness and vividness of presentation. But panoramic technique often has the advantage of clarity. The panoramic opening of "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," for instance, lets the reader know exactly where he is in time and space and provides a context for the specific actions to follow. Knowledge of the historical picture presented by Hawthorne is essential to an understanding of what happens to Major Molineux.

because of

the

Hawthorne could, of course, have found other ways the reader with the essential historical information.

have

let

much

of

it

come out

to provide

He

could

indirectly through dialogue as

the story unfolds. But the method he chose is certainly more economical than any other. Moreover, it allows him to get the necessary exposition out of the way at the beginning and to concentrate thereafter on the story's dramatic content.

A

summarizing for instance the history of would have been a disastrous choice for "Young Goodman Brown." The impact of this story depends to a great extent on our gradually increasing awareness as the story unfolds. It also depends on our close involvement similar beginning,

devil

worship

in

the colonies,

with the characters, particularly with

ment

Brown

himself, an involve-

would be seriously compromised by the intrusion of the panoramic technique. that

But Hawthorne demonstrates the mastery of the panoramic in this story as well. The last paragraph of "Young Goodman Brown" is a devastating panorama of Brown's life after that night in the forest. The sudden shift to the panoramic overview at this point in the story powerfully suggests the loss of meaning, variety, and vitality in the existence of Young Goodman Brown.

technique

The power that every reasonably sensitive reader must feel at the denouement of "Young Goodman Brown" suggests the kind by the intelligent use of both panorama and scene in his fiction. We shall now summarize some of the functions panorama can serve when used in com-

of effects a writer can achieve

bination with scene.

ECONOMY:

The panoramic technique

contributes to economy.

HOW

80

TO ANALYZE FICTION

should be obvious that the material presented panoramically the beginning of "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" could hardly be presented scenically within the confines of a single work of fiction. The material of the last paragraph of "Young Goodman Brown" could perhaps be presented scenically, but this would prevent the story from moving swiftly from climax to denouement. By shifting to panorama, Hawthorne avoids It

at

the fault of anticlimax, a severe drop in the reader's attention after the high point of interest has in the story



been reached. At any point

beginning, middle, or end



the author

may

use

panorama to present economically what, presented scenically, would require an excessive amount of time and space in view of the story's overall design.

CHANGE OF

PACE: Shifts from scene to panorama and back again can have the desirable effect of preventing monotony in the structure of the story. We must recognize, of course, that

may be willing to run some risk of monotony for the sake of a higher purpose, or that he may, without departing from the scenic technique, depend on devices other than change of pace (e.g., sheer interest in the events of the story) to prevent monotony. As a general rule, however, monotony is somea writer

thing to be avoided, and the change of pace effected by the shift

from scenic

EMPHASIS

to

panoramic

is

one good way of avoiding

AND SUBORDINATION:

It is

it,

the writers job, not

only to present to us the events of his story, but also to suggest the relative importance to the story of those events. That is, he must emphasize what is of primary importance and sub-

what is of secondary importance. The writer has him a number of devices for emphasis and subordination. The traditional development from complication to climax (see Chapter 1) is itself a means of emphasis. But the proper use of scene and panorama can also contribute to proper emphasis and subordination. Material of secondary importance, like the historical background of "My Kinsman, Major Moliordinate

available to

neux," can be presented panoramically, reserving the scenic technique for moments of crucial importance. presented panoramically does not always mean, is of secondary importance. The last paragraph of "Young Goodman Brown" is as important as any

That material

is

of course, that

it

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

81

other in the story. But this paragraph, as well as being an

example of the panoramic technique, constitutes the denouement of the story. The major structural role it plays,- as well

human material it involves, more than offsets tendency to subordination otherwise associated with the

as the force of the

the

panoramic technique.

TRANSITION:

Finally,

panorama may

a

serve

transitional

While the crucial action in a story may be presented scenically, the author must sometimes take steps to lead the reader smoothly and without confusion from one scene to another. In Anton Chekhov's short story "The Lady with a Pet Dog," the memorable moments are presented scenically. But the story covers a rather long period of time, and its events function.

occur in several different locales. The scenes, then, are widely separated in time and place. Chekhov could, of course, have simply juxtaposed the scenes of his story, but this would have produced a jarring effect, suitable for some purposes, but inappropriate to the demands of this particular story. Chekhov therefore uses panoramic passages as transitions from scene to scene.

The emphasis I have placed on the benefits of combining scene and panorama should not lead the reader to infer that the exclusive use of one technique in a story I

know

of no examples of a purely

"The

purely scenic technique of to the peculiar

present of

A

Killers"

kind of intensity, with

moment,

is

necessarily a flaw.

panoramic its

is

story,

concentration on the

The scenic Young Man promotes

story achieves.

that the

Portrait of the Artist as a

but the

entirely appropriate

quality

the im-

aginative involvement with character that the novel demands. In short, one

panorama

must always

relate the author's use of scene

and

to the design of the whole.

DIALOGUE The is

last

element of

dialogue, by which

the actual

to be considered

we mean

in

this

chapter

the presentation in fiction of

words of characters speaking

shall consider it

fiction

to

one another.

We

both the qualities of dialogue and the functions

serves in fiction.

HOW

82

TO ANALYZE FICTION

DIALOGUE AND CONCRETENESS: a

means

of satisfying the reader's

Like imagery, dialogue

demand

is

for concreteness. In

we observed that most readers want to know how things look, smell, taste, sound, and feel. We want to know this about the people in fiction as well as about the speaking of imagery,

places and things. Description can

tell us a great deal about can also tell us something about a character sounds: "He had a high, rasping voice." But the best way to find out how a character sounds is to listen to him talk. We were introduced to Dickens' Mr. Chadband in a paragraph quoted earlier in this chapter; now, let's listen

how how

to

character looks.

a

him

It

talk.

"My

Chadband, "peace be on this on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and on the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes. Therefore, my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours." says Mr.

friends,"

house!

On

the master thereof,

The experience

of hearing

the impression

we

description, satisfied

Mr. Chadband, the concreteness of be equaled by

receive, could not possibly

however

precise.

The demand

for concreteness

is

only by Mr. Chadband's actual words.

DIALOGUE AND CHARACTER: In addition to demand for concreteness, Mr. Chadband's speech function:

it

tells

empty rhetoric of someone well and

satisfying our

serves another

us a good deal about Mr. Chadband.

The

apparent inability to wish his compulsive and patently

his utterance, his let

it

go

at that,

moral character of Chadband. Dialogue, then, can be an important means of revealing insincere sermonizing,

all

reflect the

character.

The proposition

that dialogue reveals character can be turned around to become, character determines dialogue. For if we feel

that

we know Chadband better after hearing him, this implies we assume some consistency between, on the one hand,

what a man is and, on the other, what he says and how he it. A consequence of this is that dialogue is often judged on the basis of its being "in character." That is, we want to

says

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

83

be convinced that the words put in a character's mouth are words he really would use. Dickens is especially adept, among English prose writers, at creating dialogue so closely* related to character that, having once heard a Mr. Chadband speak, we recognize his voice immediately upon hearing it again. The least we may expect is that no character in a story will speak words absolutely inconsistent with his character.

NATURAL DIALOGUE:

Along with the demand one often hears that

should be in character,

that dialogue

should

it

be

The demand is a legitimate one, but we must be very that we know what we mean by it.

natural.

sure

We

must remember,

first

of

all,

that fiction itself

Fiction imposes an artificial form on material



ence that extends as

demand

is

much

not natural.

somehow

we must have

in

When we

mind

not inconsistent with a basic

must remember further that dialogue

A

demand

consider the design of the whole

experi-

essential artifice of fiction

dialogue as to anything else.

to

larger whole, the story.

to

The

naturally formless.

natural dialogue, then,

ness that

We

is

is

—human

is

a natural-

artifice.

always part of a

for naturalness that does not

may

turn out,

upon

inspection,

be a demand for incoherence.

Let's consider

some

of the things that will always be artificial

about even the most "natural" dialogue

DIALOGUE logue and

in fiction.

IS SELECTIVE: The distance between fictional diahuman speech may be more or less great, depending

on the needs of the story and the preferences of the author. But some distance there will always be. At the very least, fictional dialogue involves a process of selection from human speech.

Ordinary

human

conversation,

most highly educated and

of the

even the conversation

articulate

people,

involves

much that is rambling, irrelevant, and incoherent. How often do we find ourselves groping for words? How often do we, for all our groping, finally fail to say what we want to say? What would a tape recorder reveal to us about our habits of conversation? We might find that much of the time we sound like

this:

of

.

." .

.

"It's,

uh, you know, uh, uh, well,

you know,

sort

HOW

84

TO ANALYZE FICTION

in fiction, even in what we consider realistic fiction, seldom sound like that. This is because the process of selection mentioned above includes the removal of such irrelevancies, and this removal is obviously a departure from the natural.

Characters

Of

course, characters in fiction do sometimes grope for words.

this happens, you may be sure that the groping is at important as the words. That is, the author makes the speaker's inability to find the words he wants an indication of his character or emotional state or both. This does not in any way affect what has been said of the selective nature of fictional

But when least as

dialogue.

DIALOGUE AND

STYLE: Another note of artifice in fictional based on the relation between passages of dialogue and the author's style in general. The author must make his dialogue conform to the characters who speak it, but too great a discrepancy between the style of the dialogue passages and the style of the rest would produce a disconcerting effect. Dialogue, then, must be consistent not only with character, but dialogue

is

also with the style of the author.

much of a problem. behind the style and the characterization. It's true that Mr. Chadband's speech would be inconsistent with Ernest Hemingway's style, but it's also true that a Mr. Chadband isn't likely to turn up in a Hemingway story. In practice, this does not usually present

The same mind,

after

all, is

A NEW MEANING OF NATURAL:

mean

that

naturalness must be rejected as a standard for dialogue?

Not

necessarily.

is

all

this

But we must redefine naturalness.

Natural dialogue

what

Does

is

dialogue that

human speech

is

like

like? Let's take

my

human

speech. Well,

speech, for example.

my speech is a reflection of my personality and of background and experiences that have shaped my personality. I am of Irish ancestry and was born near Boston. In In general,

the

part,

my

speech exemplifies the accent associated with the so-

Boston Irish. I have been in the Army, stationed in Georgia, and I resided for six years in Michigan. I now live in New York. In my travels, I have been exposed to the diacalled

HOW lects of the

TO ANALYZE FICTION

various regions

I

have

visited;

I

85 have, of course,

met people from other parts of the country and from

also

other countries as well.

I

am

My

M.A. and Ph.D. also. was English, and I teach Eng-

a college graduate and hold the

major

field

of specialization

lish literature and composition now. This may mean that I have developed a greater sensitivity than most to the rhythms and nuances of language, although I suppose it need not mean any such thing. I am not fluent in languages other than English, but I have studied French, German, Latin, and Homeric Greek.

I

suppose

am

I

a product of the lower middle class, although

the dividing lines between classes are not always clear to

me.

Neither of my parents completed high school. I am the third of four children. And one of my brothers is a college graduate. My other brother and my sister are not.

This has been a random listing of some of the things in my that might have affected my speech in such matters as vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, syntax, and rhythm. The life

point

is

that

other things.

up a similar would differ

my

speech

Any one list

of

is

for himself;

in a

number

obviously related to a number of readers could undoubtedly draw

my of

no doubt many of my readers' ways from my own.

One thing most of us would have in common, however, we are native speakers of American English, and our

is

lists

that

use of

the language will certainly reflect this. Finally,

my

speech varies according to -circumstances.

sound the same when bored as

I

do when

I

don't

excited.

all this adds up to is that my speech, human speech, model for fictional dialogue, is one element in a large and complex pattern. I speak as I do partly because of my personality and experiences, partly because of the world I live in and the time I live in it, and partly because of the situation in which I find myself and to which my speech is a response.

What

the

If

we demand mean this:

let's

that fictional dialogue should be natural, then,

the relation of dialogue to personality, context

HOW

86

(e.g., social position,

TO ANALYZE FICTION

education), and situation in fiction should

the same elements in life. should be added that the author's style adds to the context in fiction an element to which nothing in life exactly corresponds.

parallel the

relation of speech to

It

it another way, dialogue in fiction should be natural world the author creates, not necessarily to the world which the author and reader really live.

Putting to the in

Natural Dialogue— An Example from Swift: But let's be specific. Is the following speech from Gulliver's Travels natural? The King of Brobdingnag is talking to Gulliver after Gulliver has given him an account of "the state of Europe."

"As

for yourself

.

.

.

who have

am

your

life

may

hitherto have escaped

travelling,

in

I

spent the greatest part of

well disposed to

many

hope you

vices of your country.

have gathered from your own relation, and have with much pains wringed and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of But, by what the answers

I

I

the earth." I don't know anybody who talks like that. I don't know anyone who's that eloquent, for one thing. But is this a natural way for the King of Brobdingnag to address Gulliver in this situation? To anyone familiar with the whole work, the affirmative answer is inescapable.

Now,

FURTHER FUNCTIONS OF DIALOGUE:

We may

note in con-

For purposes of be taken from "Young Good-

clusion three additional functions of dialogue. simplicity,

our examples

will all

man Brown." DIALOGUE GIVES INFORMATION: means by which

Dialogue

is

one of the

the author conveys information to the reader.

In "Young Goodman Brown," Brown insists that New Engenders are people of prayer and good work. The Devil, in answering Brown, provides him and us with information that challenges Brown's assertion.

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

"I have a very general acquaintance here in

87

New

England.

drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen of divers towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of my interests. The governor But these are state secrets." and I, too

The deacons

of

many

a church have



We

must remember that information imparted by a character never as reliable as information imparted directly in the author's own voice. We know that what the Devil says is true because it is confirmed by the incidents of the plot. But a is

character

may be misinformed

or

may be

deliberately lying.

DIALOGUE REVEALS EMOTIONAL TENSIONS:

Dialogue

may

reveal not only character but also the particular emotional ten-

by the character in a particular situation. Goodman Brown, the speeches in which he insists he will go no farther with the Devil, tell us a good deal about his inner emotional state. "There is my wife Faith/' he says. "It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own." The speech indicates Brown's unwillingness, but it also indicates the weakness of his resolve. Simply by arguing with the Devil, he is inviting rebuttal, and we are not surprised sions experienced

The

hesitations of

that he does not turn back.

DIALOGUE ADVANCES THE PLOT: The conflict that dominates the early portions of "Young Goodman Brown," as Brown argues with the Devil, is developed primarily through dialogue. Each new speech advances the plot a step further. When Brown mentions his wife, we know he is nearing the end of his argument, and when the. Devil expresses concern Brown's wife, we sense sinister overtones. The speeches then are not simply casual conversation to fill a few pages, but an integral part of the development of the conflict which

for

is

plot.

CHAPTER 7

THEME INTRODUCTION: and teachers of

Theme-hunting is a favorite activity of critics And, since this is so, it's a common

fiction.

activity of students as well. Indeed, the experience of reading

and the papers of eager students might lead one to believe that writing a story is simply a way

the essays of academic critics

of finding a clever disguise for

some

abstract idea.

And why

should a writer so disguise his ideas? Apparently, to give critics and students something to do.

For led

all

one

produced excesses that have young critic to declare herself "against intertheme is something that has traditionally concerned

that theme-hunting has brilliant

pretation,"

and that therefore is a legitimate concern of readers. is an understanding of theme that will make us aware of its function and meaning in literature without encouraging us to the excesses and outright absurdities that have become altogether too common. writers

What we need

The purpose

of this chapter is to help in the development of such an understanding. We shall be dealing with three basic questions: What do we mean by theme? How do we determine the theme of a particular story? What is the importance of

theme

in fiction?

THE MEANING OF THEME

To

put the matter simply, theme is the meaning of the story. But any experienced reader of fiction will realize that this is not a very informative definition, and even less experienced readers, upon thinking it over, may begin to wonder in what sense a story can mean anything. Our definition, then, is only a first step towards understanding what theme is.

88

HOW WHAT THEME

IS

TO ANALYZE FICTION

89

NOT: We may more closely approach the if we devote some attention to what theme is

meaning of theme

Theme is not the moral of the story, it is not the subject, and although I have defined it as the meaning of the story, it is not what most people have in mind when they speak of "what the story really means." not.

One doesn't hear much the Moral of the Story: about the moral of the story these days. The phrase is used occasionally, but most of the time in a context that makes clear it's being used, ironically. But one does hear so much about theme, that one may wonder if "theme" isn't just a sophisticates' word for moral. Theme and

talk

way both words have been used, we find mean quite the same thing. By the moral of the story we usually mean a piece of rather practical moral advice that can be derived from the story. The moral must If

we examine

the

that they don't

be rather simple, for it must be pretty readily applicable to the readers' own conduct.

The word theme,

by most critics, also means somefrom the story, and is in that sense rather like a moral. But a theme can be a good deal more complex than a moral and may in fact have no direct value as advice at all. We may conclude that a moral is one of the simpler kinds of theme, while not all themes are morals. as used

thing that can be derived

Theme and

Subject:

The theme

the subject of the story

"theme"

in



is not identical with not as we'll use the term

of a story

at least,

our discussion. Some critics, two terms as synonymous.

it

is

true,

do seem

to regard the

In the

first

chapter

we

talked about subject. Subject,

we

ob-

what the work refers to. Thus a possible formulation of Flaubert's Madame Bovary would be "the problems of a served,

is

woman." Some might prefer to have the subject stated more abstractly: "dissatisfaction with reality." Others might prefer a more specific formulation: "the dissatisfaction with reality that develops in a bourgeois Frenchwoman as a response to the limitations of her provincial environment." certain kind of middle-class

HOW

90

Any one

of these formulations

not a theme.

By

a theme

whether the

the subject,

mains

TO ANALYZE FICTION is

the formulation of a subject,

we mean some sort of comment on comment is stated explicitly or re-

implicit.

Not What the Story Illustrates: Although I have defined the theme earlier as the meaning of the story, we should not fall into the error of regarding the story as the illustration of

some

"hidden meaning" which might have been illustrated in any number of other ways. This kind of thinking leads to the belief that the details of which the story is made up, and the precise arrangement of those details, are important only as illustration of something else, i.e., the hidden meaning. Hence, once this meaning is discovered, the story itself may be quickly forgotten. A different statement of essentially the same view is that the precise arrangement of detail is the story's form, while its content is some abstraction that we pull out of all this with the content, in this sense, regarded as what's really



important.

People in

who approach fiction in this way aren't really at all. What they're really interested in

fiction

The interest when it leads

may

in ideas

is

itself

is

ideas.

quite legitimate, of course, but

to a distortion of the experience of literature,

regret the effect even while not

The notion

interested

of fiction as a

way

one

condemning the cause.

of illustrating ideas

is

often

contempt for fiction. After all, if it's the ideas that count, why do we need all this tomfoolery of made-up characters in imaginary plots? Perhaps fiction exists for people of inferior intellect who are unable to take their ideas straight. In fact some such notion often lurks behind the contempt otherwise intelligent people sometimes feel for fiction. And if fiction is simply an attractive way of packaging ideas, it's hard to know how to refute this notion. related to a latent or overt

The other form

is the practical man's form of escape. According to this view, being made up, has nothing to do with life as it really

of contempt for fiction

feeling that fiction fiction, is.

It's

simply a

is

way

a

of escaping harsh realities

(for practical

men, realities tend to be harsh). The practical man then either contemptuously ignores fiction altogether, or condescends to

HOW amuse himself with

mood

it

TO ANALYZE FICTION during vacations,

when he

91 is

not in the

for anything "serious."

Obviously, contempt for fiction

is

not the attitude of

this

book,

book wants to encourage in the reader. It is position of this book that fiction is neither a way of illustratideas nor an irresponsible escape from reality. Ultimately,

or the attitude this the ing

the end of fiction

but

reality,

it

is

to increase the reader's understanding of

does not achieve

this

end simply by

illustrating

ideas.

WHAT

THE THEME?:

If theme is not the moral, not the "hidden meaning'' illustrated by the story, what is it? Theme is meaning, but it is not "hidden," and it is not illustrated. Theme is the meaning the story releases; it may be IS

subject, not a

the

meaning the story discovers. By theme we mean the neces-

sary implications of the whole story, not a separable part of a story.

want to make some kind of sense out of our exwant to know who we are; we want to know where we stand; we want to know what our relations are to other men and to the universe. Theme is the equivalent in fiction to this normal human impulse.

Most

of us

perience.

We

There are two points to be made about operates in

life.

One

is

that

this

impulse as

making sense of experience

it

requires

a full recognition of the complexity of experience.

I haven't simply ignore whatever in experience is difficult, unpleasant, or inconvenient. The other point is that there is always something unique about the sense any one of us makes of experience. You and I may both be

really

made

sense of anything

if

I

religious

(or irreligious), liberal (or conservative), optimistic (or pessimistic), but I will not be religious, liberal, optimistic (or their opposites or the many shades between) in precisely the way you are, simply because I am not you.

These points apply also to theme in fiction. Theme in fiction is what the author is able to make of the total experience rendered. And although there will be something general in the theme of a work of fiction, there will always be something unique there as well. We may, for the sake of convenience, be prepared to

HOW

92

TO ANALYZE FICTION

express the theme of a story in general terms, but we must always be aware of how the general statement has been modified,

rendered unique by

qualified,

story as

it

WHICH COMES story?

all

the particular details of the

unfolds.

Does

FIRST?:

Which comes

first, the theme or the theme he wants to express whose theme he gradually comes

the author begin with a

in

a story, or with a story

to

recognize?

Any

writer of fiction

will

recognize that this

question as presented is phrased in misleadingly simple terms; the process of writing is more complicated than that. But we

can perhaps come to some understanding of our subject by pursuing this inquiry a bit further, for all the danger of oversimplification. Oversimplification is harmful only when we are

unaware

that we're oversimplifying.

very simply, then, a writer may begin either with If he begins with story say, with a fragment of action part of the process of writing will be his discovery of what this means to him. Why has it suggested itself to him, and why has he been moved to accept the suggestion, to attempt to develop the fragment as a complete story? Putting

it



a theme or a story.



The answer to

will

reveal itself primarily by

do with the fragment that

is

what he is moved by the form

his starting point,

the story takes as it develops. At some point or other, the author may find that he can express his theme in a sentence or two. But this expression, even though it comes directly from the author, will only be a simplification of the complex process of discovery that is the story itself.

may begin with theme. He may have some view experience he wants to express and will undertake to write a story for the purpose of expressing it. But to express a theme, at least to express it in fiction, is not merely to illustrate it. Fiction involves character and action, and character and action have a way of making their own demands on an author. In giving life to a character, in working out the process of an action, the writer will find himself doing much more than illustrating a theme. He is producing an independent creation with its own existence and its own vitality. If the author refuses to accept this, he will wind up producing a lifeless, unconvincing fiction that is at the same time not likely to be an adequate Or

of

the writer

human

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

93

theme. At least, we may assume that important to an author to move him to the hard work of writing a story cannot be adequately expressed in a story that is lifeless and unconvincing.

expression of the a

theme

initial

sufficiently

WRITING

IS

The

DISCOVERY:

general truth involved here

is

not merely an act of expression; it is also an act of discovery. To illustrate this point, let's consider my experience in writing this book. The subject of this book is one to which, as a student and a teacher, I have given years

that the act of writing

is

my job in this book is simply to exhave formed over the years. And the book is written to a plan. Before writing the first word of the first chapter, I organized my thoughts into notes and made a detailed outline of what the book was to contain. of thought. Presumably,

press the thoughts

Yet

this

before.

I

I

book contains many ideas that I never thought of discovered them in the act of writing. I am gradually

what I think about fiction by writing a book about Paul Goodman, the brilliant modern writer and social critic, is supposed to have said that when he doesn't know what he thinks about a subject, he writes an article about it. And, according to an old story, a schoolchild once said, "How do I know what I think until I hear what I say?" finding out it.

Writing

is

discovery. If this

exposition like the

is

true of a straightforward job of

book you're reading, how much more

must be of the highly concentrated forms of drama, and poetry!

it

ALLEGORY:

A

true

fiction,

between theme and form we know as allegory. Allegory is essentially fiction dominated by theme. Characters and incidents in allegory exist to represent qualities and must special case of the relation

the other elements of fiction

be

consistent

with

the

characters are given the

is

the

they

qualities

names of

(Patience or Friendship, for example). exist

to

express a theme, and

if

inconsistent with the theme, this a

Is

represent.

Often,

the

the qualities they represent

As

a form, allegory does

the story contains anything

may

properly be considered

flaw.

there,

then, any

room

for discovery in allegory?

The

best

HOW

94

way

TO ANALYZE FICTION

answer is to read the greatest of English prose John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. As an allegory,

to find the

allegories,

and a great one, this work contains nothing inconsistent with its basic theme. But anyone who has read this wonderful book knows that it cannot be described simply as the illustration of a theme. Much of its power comes from the vividness and detail within the allegorical framenot in our time a fashionable form, and most of the allegories of the past are unread today. If Pilgrim's Progress still moves us, perhaps it is because of our sense of Bunyan's discovery of the relation between the abstractions

concreteness

of

work. Allegory

realistic

is

him with

his framework and the homely, everywhich he lived out his life. Pilgrim's Progress is a great allegory and a great work of fiction because it is not simply an illustration of a theme, but a work of discovery and creation.

that provided

day

reality

in

DISCOVERING THEME THE SEARCH FOR THEME:

Theme,

then,

is

the total

meaning

discovered by the writer in the process of writing and by the reader in the process of reading. The statement of theme in a sentence or two that one may make while discussing a story can be no more than a useful simplification, a way of pointing to the

more complex experience

of the story as a whole.

then the process of discovering theme must be is no easy way to it. We cannot, for instance, ask the writer what his theme is. If he answers us at all (he probably won't), he can give us, as we have seen, only a simplification of the total meaning of his work. If the

If this

is

so,

a complex one. There

theme could be so

easily expressed,

he wouldn't have had to

write the story.

We

can discover the theme of a story only by a thorough and responsive reading of the story, involving a constant awareness of the relations among the parts of the story and of the relation of parts to whole.

What

follows

of the things to which a reader

is

a discussion of

must give

some

his attention in the

search for theme.

THEME AND CHARACTER:

As

a

major element

in

fiction,

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

95

character is obviously of major importance for theme. One matter to be kept in mind in reading is the kind of characters the story deals with. If a writer like Henry James seems characteristically

drawn

women, we may

to highly sensitive, highly articulate

feel justified in

assuming that he

men and

finds a special

value in the lives of such people, that they mean something him. If a writer like Nelson Algren, on the other hand,

to

populates his fictional world largely with pimps, streetwalkers,

drug addicts, sex deviates, and petty thieves, this must indicate that Algren regards the lives of these outcasts as significant. F. Scott Fitzgerald's fascination with the very rich suggests

a great deal about the

meaning experience has

for him.

AND THEME: Plot is what the characters do and what happens to them. A first question about plot and theme is whether the author's characters do things, or whether things happen to them. The characters of Henry Fielding, on the one hand, do things, while things tend to happen to the characters of Thomas Hardy and Theodore Dreiser. This difference indicates something about the author's view of the extent to which man can control his destiny. We must be prepared, of course, for a highly complex mixture of these two possibilities. PLOT

We

must also ask what kind of things the characters do and what kind of things happen to them. The characters of Heming-

way engage

extensively in physical action, in the

senses, while the principal actions in the fiction of

life

of the

Henry James

tend to be acts of intellect and conscience. Such tendencies suggest something about the author's sense of what kind of actions are

most

and most revealing.

significant

MOTIVATION AND THEME: By motivation we mean reasons why the characters do what they do. First we must

the

ask

whether the actions in the story are clearly motivated. The absence of clear motivation may be an artistic flaw, but we should not arrive too hastily at such a conclusion. The absence of clear motivation in some of Joseph Conrad's fiction is a legitimate reflection of Conrad's sense of the mystery of the

human

personality.

What kind

of

motives

particular motives

seem

stir

to

the

characters

dominate them?

to

action?

If all the

What

principal

HOW

96

TO ANALYZE FICTION

characters in a given story seem motivated by greed, this seems to suggest some evaluation of human character. To what extent

does the author engage

Sherwood Anderson,

in the

in

psychological analysis of motives?

stories like "I

Want

to

Know Why,"

seems especially concerned with the psychological states underlying our actions and decisions; but psychological analysis is not a major concern of all writers. The motives that interest Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, for instance, are not primarily psychological. When we are told that Gatsby lives up to his own Platonic conception of himself, we are being given motivation, but not psychological motivation of the kind that concerns Anderson.

To what

Many

extent do the characters understand their

own motives?

of the writers often called "naturalists," including Stephen

Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and James T. Farrell, make much of their characters' failure to understand themselves.

SETTING

AND

What

THEME:

the lives of the characters? In

role does

environment play

in

Thomas Hardy's The Return

of the characters

and in George Eliot's Middlemarch seem dominated by environment. A writer's reliance on what we have called a "neutral setting" (see Chapter 3) suggests that for him factors other than environment are of crucial the Native

importance in

What kind

human

experience.

The exotic setting "The Heart of Darkness" is not irrelevant to its total meaning. The urban setting of James T. Farrell's fiction, the rural settings favored by William Faulkner are reflections of the experience, mind, and values of the authors. of setting does the author prefer?

of a story like Conrad's

POINT OF VIEW

AND

THEME: The point of view from which have great thematic importance. The use of a limited point of view may be related to a distrust of general overviews of experience. Or it may suggest that what

the story

is

told can

we make of information is more important than the information itself. The omniscient point of view may suggest a confidence in

our

STYLE

ability to arrive at a full

AND

THEME:

The

understanding of experience.

relation of style to

sidered in the chapter on style. Style,

we have

theme was con-

said,

is

the reflec-

HOW tion of the author's

TO ANALYZE FICTION

way

of perceiving experience

izing his perceptions. It

meaning of the

story.

97

is,

and of organ-

then, a basic element in the total

The reader

is

referred to Chapter 5 for

a further discussion of this point.

TONE AND THEME:

The attitudes the author takes toward and toward the audience are obviously crucial to

his material

theme.

And

tone

is

attitudes in fiction. faith

is

the term

we use

for the expression of these

For Frank O'Connor, the

a subject to be treated lightly; for

same subject

calls for the

ence in tone

is

loss of religious

Graham Greene

most serious treatment. This

the

differ-

obviously related to a difference in meaning.

AND THEME: By values we mean our sense of good and bad, of desirable and undesirable. What are the values of the characters in the story and which of these values, if any, does the author seem to endorse? What seems to be the author's sense of the highest end, and what values seem to promote that end? VALUES

The search unifies the

for theme, then,

many

is

the search for the force that

diverse elements that

make up

the

work

of

fiction.

THEME

IN

"YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN":

The

taciturn

President Calvin Coolidge was once asked what had been the subject of the minister's sermon at a church service he had attended. "Sin," he replied. "But what did the minister say about it?" the questioner pursued. "He was against it." Sin

may

also be considered the subject of Nathaniel

Hawthorne's

"Young Goodman Brown," but what he says about it is rather more complex than the theme of the sermon Coolidge heard. The climax of Hawthorne's story occurs when Brown discovers his wife, Faith, among the sinners. This discovery is one of a series. Brown has found that virtually the entire population of Salem village, including its most respected citizens, has come to take part in the diabolical ritual. And the Devil's comments make clear that he has friends and followers throughout New England.

Now, is

it

is

certainly not

Hawthorne's point that The Devil talks about

a uniquely wicked place.

New New

England England

HOW

98

TO ANALYZE FICTION

Brown does. The Devil might have said he has friends and followers throughout the world. The story seems to sug-

because

gest, then, that

significant

we

are

statement,

all

Now

this in itself is a fairly seen as a rejection of the

sinners.

especially

if

Puritan tradition's division of mankind into the elect and the damned. But there is obviously more to the story than this, for if this were the theme we could not account for the denouement of the story.

The denouement insight provided

A

Brown is unable to accept the experience in the forest.

reveals that

by

his

stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful,

if

not a

man did he become from the night of that feardream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation

desperate ful

were singing a holy psalm, he would not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, awaking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or at eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom. It

is

clear

enough

that

Hawthorne does not endorse Brown's

response to what he has seen, for

from

his fellow

this

response cuts

man and condemns him

to a life

Brown

off

and death

of gloom.

The reasons

for Brown's response are to be found in his attitude toward Faith. "Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven." But Faith is not a blessed angel; she is a human being, capable,

HOW like

Brown

"Come,

Brown

himself, of sin.

he finds her

among

99

TO ANALYZE FICTION idealizes his wife.

And when

the sinners, he goes to the other extreme.

devil; for to thee is this

world given."

Brown can see his wife only as an angel or as a devil. He cannot see her as a woman. His attitude towards his wife is his attitude towards the world. Brown cannot accept a mixed view of human nature. In the gloom to which this failure leads him we find the key to the story's theme.

We

might state that theme

like this:

"It

is

essential to develop

man, accepting both his capacity for good and his capacity for evil." But, it must be remembered, this is only a simplification of the richly complex experience of

a realistic view of

the story.

THEME

IN FICTION

THE IMPORTANCE OF THEME: It is possible to overestimate theme in fiction. When this happens, you have the view, discussed earlier, that the work of fiction is

the importance of

simply the illustration of a theme. It is also possible to underits importance. This is what is involved in the view

estimate

of fiction as meaningless escape.

mere

neither

nor

illustration,

establish, as clearly as

we

is

As we have it

seen, fiction

meaningless.

Let's

can, the precise importance of

try

is

to

theme

in fiction.

Theme, we have

make

desire to

seen,

is

the reflection in fiction of the

sense of experience. Since

it

reflects

human

so basic

and universal a desire of mankind, it is an important part of and universal appeal of fiction.

the basic

Fiction

one of the ways by which we make sense of itself, as we have said in other connecformless. By giving form to experience in fiction the

is

in fact

experience. Experience tions,

writer

is

clarifies

the

meaning of experience

for

himself.

The

an act of moral evaluation. If a writer makes an incident the climax of a story, he is asserting by doing so that that incident is important.

act of constructing a story

is

itself

HOW

100

The understanding

TO ANALYZE FICTION

of experience

we can hope to we may

with that

fiction is not, of course, identical

derive from derive from

philosophy or science. These disciplines are necessarily and properly abstract. But fiction has the concreteness of experience itself. It imposes meaning on experience, not by abstract statement but by form. Fiction, then, offers us a kind of wisdom not to be derived, on the one hand, from experience itself or, on the other hand, from philosophy and science. The theme of fiction is entirely incarnated in the concrete experience of fiction.

We have noted our discussion the contribution to unity of such elements as plot and point of view. But theme is the ultimate unifying element in fiction. It is in response to the pressures of theme that the author shapes plot and brings character into being, and it is theme, whether consciously stated or not, that provides the writer with his most important

Theme at

has

further importance in fiction.

still

appropriate

points

in

principle of selection.

THE UNACCEPTABLE THEME: fiction, is

it

If

theme

is

so

possible for a reader to accept a story

important

in

whose theme

he finds unacceptable? Suppose one does not accept, for instance, the view of human nature implied by "Young Goodman Brown." Must one then condemn the story?

The answer

to this

question

is

rather complicated.

hardly assert that the only good story

is

We

can

the one the reader

agrees with. But we don't want to pretend that the unacceptable theme doesn't present any problems whatever.

between themes that we decide, and themes that we reject at once as unworthy of our attention. The second kind of theme we'll put aside for the time being. But there seems no reason why we can't admire a story embodying a theme of the first sort. Even the reader who, on whatever grounds, rejects the theme of "Young Goodman Brown" must admit Let's distinguish

after

thinking

that the story

experience. the theme.

it

is

first

over,

of

all

are unacceptable

an honest attempt to make sense out of human that attempt without accepting

One may honor

HOW This

still

TO ANALYZE FICTION

suggests that, other things being

the reader

may

more or

whose theme he

prefer the story

101 less equal,

finds acceptable

whose theme he finds unacceptable. And the reader almost certainly reject the story whose theme he finds

to the story will

unworthy of serious

attention.

But since theme does not come to us in a pure state in fiction, is obviously absurd to judge a story on theme alone. Vitality

it

of characterization, precision of style,

among

are

we do not

the qualities

we may

and

intensity of plotting

value in a work whose theme

accept.

THEME AND VISION:

The views I have stated on the problem whose theme I cannot accept are not precisely my own. I have stated them here, as fairly as I can, because they are commonly held by intelligent and experienced readers. What follows is a statement of my own views on theme and meaning in fiction. I shall preface these remarks by pointof evaluating a story

ing out that my approach tends to reduce the importance of theme in evaluating a story, without at the same time denying the importance of theme in the pattern of fiction.

For me, what

is

of

first

but the vision, which

is

importance in fiction is not the theme simply a word for the author's total

response to experience, his total relation to the universe. It is nature of the writer's vision that it cannot be reduced to a phrase or a sentence any more than his entire personality can be so reduced, for his vision is precisely his personality in the

as

it

gets into his fiction.

What good

fiction allows

ence through someone is

me

to

do

is

look at

human

experi-

eyes of the author. This far different from the experience of reading a philosophical else's eyes, the

which only permits me to hear what someabout human experience. The writer of fiction creates a world that is relevant to the world in which he and I live. In his fiction he gives me a direct vision of that world essay, for instance,

one

else says

and therefore of

my own

world.

of this experience is that, by acquainting me with ways of perceiving other than my own, it increases the

The importance

ways of perceiving available

to

me. This

in turn

increases the

HOW

102 of

possibilities

my

TO ANALYZE FICTION

my coming

to

some kind

of understanding of

world and of myself.

Another way of putting it is to say that fiction enriches the imagination. The importance of this was recognized and expressed by the English poet Shelley. In the passage I quote, Shelley uses the ture,

word "poetry"

and therefore

to include

all

imaginative litera-

fiction.

Ethical science arranges the elements which poetry has

and propounds schemes and proposes examples and domestic life: nor is it for want of admirable doctrines that men hate, and despise, and censure, and deceive, and subjugate one another. But poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise created,

of civil

.

.

.

.

.

.

strengthens a limb.

The imagination

is the organ of man's moral nature, and this strengthened by the experience of literature. This, and not the communication of doctrines in the form of themes,

organ is

is

the function of literature.

by the range or

intensity (or both) of the writer's judge his work, and this vision pervades every element of the work, down to the tiniest detail of verbal It is,

then,

imaginative vision that

I

style. What is the role of theme in all of this? The essential one of permitting the author to control, to give order to, his

perceptions.

The theme,

in short,

is

at the service of the vision.

seems to me relatively unimportant whether accept or reject the theme in itself. It

I

therefore

don't accept the glorification of crime that

I

I

find in the novels

Genet (The Thief's Journal, Our Lady of the Flowers). But Genet requires his theme to give order to his vision. And his vision contributes significantly to the development of my moral imagination. Therefore I honor his work and am grateof Jean

ful for

it.

APPENDIX

THE SHORT STORY INTRODUCTION:

Most

AND

THE NOVEL

what has been said so far in this and the novel. Plot, character, point of view, theme are all elements common to both forms. Yet the experience of reading a short story does differ in many ways from that of reading a novel, and some discussion of the peculiarities of the two forms seems in order. of

book applies equally well

LENGTH:

More

A

short story

to the short story

is

short and a novel

is

relatively long.

the term "short story" is normally applied to works of fiction ranging in length from one thousand to fifteen thousand words. Novels are generally thought of as containing about forty-five thousand words or more. Works specifically,

from about fifteen thousand to about fortythousand words are commonly called novellas.

of prose fiction of five

Length

many

itself

may seem

a purely mechanical consideration, but

of the important qualities of the

two forms are

clearly

related to length.

THE SHORT STORY The Nor

short story, for instance, is it

is

not merely a truncated novel.

part of an unwritten novel.

It's

true that

works

original-

published as short stories later turn up as chapters in novels, but you'll usually find that considerable revision has occurred ly

in the process.

The

length of a good short story

is

an essential

part of the experience of the story.

Edgar Allan Poe length

matter of a short story's proper should be short enough to be read at Poe also said the story should be long enough to

when he

settled the

said

one sitting. produce the desired

it

effect

on the reader.

103

HOW

104

From

Poe's rules

TO ANALYZE FICTION

we can

The

derive another:

sought

effect

one that can be achieved short enough to be read in one sitting.

a short story should be

in

a

in

work

INTENSITY: What kind of effect is appropriate to the short Without seeking to impose artificial limits, we may observe that the short story seems particularly suited to effects of intensity, and to uses of the elements of fiction that tend to such effects. story?

AND

PLOT

The

INTENSITY:

plot of the short story will often

"My Kinsman, Major Molineux" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The protagonist of the story is "a young man from the provinces," a type that has always fascinated novelists. The young man wants to make his way in the world, and in this desire we certainly have a subject out of which a novel could be made. In fact, it would be impossible to count the number of novels that have been turn on a single incident. Let's consider

made

out of just that subject.

But Hawthorne's cifically

He

interests lie elsewhere.

a single night in the

life

presents us with

of Robin, his protagonist,

more

with Robin's search for his kinsman. But this night

speis

a

Robin's life. In fact, it becomes a major turning point for Robin. He had arrived in the town to seek the protection of his kinsman, but at the end of the story he is told, "You may rise in the world without the help of your kinsman, Major Molineux." significant

The

one

in

short story

is

commonly based on

a single incident that

takes on great significance for the characters.

Young Goodman

Brown's night in the forest, the arrival of two killers in a small town diner such incidents are typical of the short story.



CHARACTER AND INTENSITY:

Development implies

the writer of the short story has

time, and

time at his disposal.

little

Therefore, characters seldom develop in the short story. Rather, they are revealed to us. "The Killers" gives us Nick Adams as he

is

trace his

at

a certain

stage

development beyond

REVELATION:

in

his

development.

It

does not

this stage.

Revelation of character

is

only one part of the

HOW pattern of revelation

TO ANALYZE FICTION

common

105

to the short story. Note, for in-

by Hawthorne discussed in this book are stories of revelation. So is Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," discussed in Chapter 5. And so is "The that the

stance,

two

stories

Killers."

AND

TIME

The two Hawthorne

INTENSITY:

Killers" share another

common

(The

tions limited to a single evening.

Goodman Brown" ly

and "The

paragraph of "Young

last

extends the time element there, but essential-

remains the story of one night

it

stories

element: each deals with ac-

in

Brown's

drawn

life.)

The

such limited time periods, although some short stories of course cover rather extended periods. writer of the short story

is

naturally

to

To summarize, we

associate with the short story such qualities compression, concentration, intensity. These qualities are

as

related to the length of the story

and

to the structural qualities

the length suggests.

THE NOVEL

Where

the short story compresses, the novel expands.

intensity of the short story,

For the

the novel substitutes complexity.

These assertions may provide a

starting point for our discussion

of the novel.

TIME

AND

THE NOVEL:

The novel

to be read at a single sitting. is

is

Because of

particularly suited, as the short story

is

decidedly not meant its

length, the novel

not, to deal with the

on character of the passage of time. Such works as War and Peace and Thackeray's Vanity Fair are particularly notable examples of the novel's power in treating

effect

Tolstoy's this

subject.

DEVELOPMENT:

One

effect of the

passage of time

is

the de-

velopment of character. The novel permits us to watch this development. A favorite subject of novelists is the growth of a character from childhood to maturity. Dickens' David Copperfield and Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are examples.

HOW

106

TO ANALYZE FICTION

SPACE AND THE NOVEL: The length of the novel permits expansiveness in space as well as in time. It is therefore not surprising that man in society has been a favorite subject of novelists. Society has both its spatial and temporal aspects. society is obviously related to place, but one's role in society changes and develops with time.

A

UNITY:

We may

bring this

brief

discussion

to

a

close

by

observing that the short story achieves unity by exclusion. The author leaves out all that is not absolutely essential. The novel achieves unity by inclusion. life

as he

can control by

his

The author puts in as theme.

much

of

This brief discussion of the two major forms of prose fiction is not meant to be exhaustive. To exhaust the subject would require an additional book. It is hoped that the reader will find this discussion suggestive.

BIBLIOGRAPHY It would be impossible to list all the books and essays that have been devoted to the subject of fiction. The following is simply a list of some of the most important and most useful works on the subject.

Aid ridge, John W. Critiques and Essays in Modern Fiction, 1920-1951. New York, 1952. An anthology of critical essays.

The English Novel: A Short Critical History. York, 1954. The best one-volume history, full of

Allen, Walter.

New

insights valuable to the student of fiction.

Booth,

Wayne

C.

The Rhetoric

of Fiction. Chicago, 1961.

The

most important recent work. Casill,

R. V. Writing Fiction.

potential

writer

of

New

York, 1962. Aimed at the but enlightening for readers

fiction,

as well.

M. Aspects

Forster, E.

of the Novel.

New

York, 1927. One

of the classic studies.

Gordon, Caroline.

How

to

Read a Novel. New York, 1957.

Lubbock, Percy. The Craft of Fiction. New York, 1929. Advances a theory of fiction based on the practice of Henry James.

O'Connor, Frank. The Mirror

A

1956.

study of the

in

modern

the

Roadway.

New

York,

novel.

Van Ghent, Dorothy. The

New

York,

English Novel: Form and Function. 1953. Analyzes eighteen significant English

novels.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959. study of the early development of the novel that

A

casts light

on the nature of the form. 107

INDEX Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The, 68 Alexandria Quartet, 55 Algren, Nelson, 95 Allegory, 93-94 Ambassadors, The, 53 "Anchors," 69-70 Anderson, Sherwood, 96 Anticlimax, 80

Chekhov, Anton, 81 Christie, Agatha, 21

Clarissa Harlow e, 55 Climax, 17, 18 Complication, 17, 18

Compression 105

(in short story),

Concentration (in short story), 105 Concreteness of style, 59, 82,

Aristotle, 23, 31

Arrangement, 75-76, 90 As I Lay Dying, 55 Aspects of the Novel, 28, 29 "Aspern Papers, The," 52 Atmosphere, 41-42 Attic style, 57

94 Conflict, 17, 18, 19,

87

Connotation, 60-63 Conrad, Joseph, 95, 96 Consistency, 31-32, 84, 94 Content, 10, 90 Context, 85, 86 Contextual method, 34, 36 Conventions, literary, 9 Coolidge, Calvin, 97 Cozzens, James Gould, 72 Crane, Stephen, 65, 96

Austen, Jane, 12

Bacon, Francis, 58 Barchester Towers, 44 Bell for Adano,A, 72 Bleak House, 41,74-75, 82 Bunyan, John, 94 Burns, Robert, 65 By Love Possessed, 72

David Copperfield, 29, 105 Denotation, 60-63

Denouement, 19 Cable, George Washington, 43

Description, 74-76, 82

Carr, John Dickson, 21

Development, 36 and passim Dialogue, 81-87

Cather, Willa, 43 Character, 24-37, 50, 82-83, 105; in short 92, 95, story,

103-4

Dickens, Charles, 29, 33, 41, 42, 71, 72, 74-75, 82, 83, 84, 105

108

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

109

Diction, 60-64

Freeman, Mary Wilkins, 43-44

Discursive method, 34-35

Fuchs, Daniel, 43

Dostoevsky, Feodor, 72 Dramatic method, 34, 35 Dramatic viewpoint— see Objective viewpoint Dreiser, Theodore, 58, 95, 96 "Dry September," 64 Durrell, Lawrence, 55

Economy Eliot,

79-80

of style, 59,

George, 38, 40, 41, 42,

Genet, Jean, 102 Good Soldier, The, 55-36

Goodman,

Paul, 93

Granissimes, The, 43 Great Gatsby, The, 13, 14, 43, 54, 55, 67, 71-72, 96

Greene, Graham, 97 Gulliver's Travels, 61-64, 71, 75-76, 86

96

Emma,

Hardy, Thomas, 42, 43, 44,

12

Emphasis, 80

95,96

Environment— see

Harte, Bret, 72 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 15-22, 42, 76-80, 86-87, 97-99,

Setting

Epistolary novel, 55 Escapism, 90-91, 99 Expectations of the reader,

9,

12,39 Exposition, 15

104, 105 "Heart of Darkness, The," 96

Hemingway,

Expression, 23, 93

Ernest,

13,

14,

38, 43, 54, 60, 65, 67,

68,70-71,72,78,81,84, "Fall of the

House

of Usher,

The," 62-63, 105 Fantasy, 44 Farrell,

95 Henry, O., 72

Henry Esmond, 42

James

T., 58,

96

Hersey, John, 72

Faulkner, William, 26-27, 44,

Hidden meaning, 90

55, 64, 72, 96 Fielding, Henry, 22-23, 38, 95 "Fifty Grand," 68

Humphrey

Figures of speech, 64-65 Fitzgerald,

43,

F.

54,

Scott,

67,

13,

14,

71-72,

95,

96 Flaubert, Gustave, 10-11, 89

Imagery, 60, 64-66, 82 Information (in dialogue), 86-87 Inhibition,

72-73

Instability, 15-16, 18

Ford, Ford Madox, 55 Foreshadowing, 22

Intensity (in short story),

104-5

Form, 10, 100 Formula (in style), 59 Forster, E. M., 28, 29,

Clinker, 55

Hyperbole, 71, 72

Irony, 71

30

"I

Want

to

Know Why," 96

1

1

HOW

110

TO ANALYZE FICTION

James, Henry, 46, 52, 53, 58, 67, 68, 72-73, 95 Jewett, Sarah Orne, 43-44 Joyce, James, 78, 81, 105 Jude the Obscure, 42

The," 13, 14, 54, 55, 78,81, 104, 105 King Lear, 22 "Killers,

"Lady with a Pet Dog, The," 8

Lawrence, D. H.,

1

Lifelikeness (in character and

dialogue), 24-27, 29, 30,

technique,

Narrative

76-81;

see also Narration, varieties

of

"Naturalness," 50, 83-86 Norris, Frank, 96 Novel, length of, 193-6 Novella, 103

Objective viewpoint, 54 O'Connor, Frank, 69-70, 97 O'Hara, John, 72 Old Curiosity Shop, The, 72

Omniscience, in narration, 49-50, 54, 55 Our Lady of the Flowers, 102

31,32,33 Lolita,

68

Madame B ovary, 10-11, 89 Meaning, 55, 56, 66, 89, 90, 91 Melville,

Plot,

Herman,

30, 33,

'

love rose

is

"

like

a red,

red

65

Nabokov' Vladimir, 68 of, 48-54, 67-68; see also Narrative technique

Narration, varieties

13-23, 24, 36, 37, 57, 95; laws of, 19; in

87,

66-67 Metaphor, 65 Metaphoric setting, 40-41 Middlemarch, 38, 40, 41, 42, 96 Moby Dick, 30, 33, 66-67 Monotony, 80 Mora1 89 Motivation, 36-37, 95-96 My Antonia, 43 My Kinsman, Major Mollneux," 17, 76-80, 104, 105

"My

Panoramic narration, 76-81 Period styles, 57 Pilgrim's Progress, 94 Plausibility, 19-21, 37

short story, 104

Poe, Edgar Allan, 62-63, 103,

105 Poetics, 31

Point of view, 46-56, 96 Portrait

of

the

young Man,

Artist

as

a

78, 81, 105

Pride and Prejudice, 12

Realism, 20, 23

„ ^d ,

D n^ r, Badge of Courage, The, ,

,

Regionalism, 43-44

Relevance, 26-27, 30, 33 Return of the Native, The, 43, 96 Richardson, Samuel, 55 Roth, Henry, 43

HOW

TO ANALYZE FICTION

Thackeray, William Make-

Sarcasm, 71 Scenic narration, 76-81

peace, 29, 30, 31, 33, 36,

Science fiction, 44 Selection

42, 49, 63, 106

(selectivity),

75-76,

Setting, 38-45,

Theme, 88-102 Thief's Journal, The, 102

83-86, 100, 106

Time (temporal

Sentimentality, 72

setting), 42-

43; in short story, 104-5 Tolstoy, Leo, 105

96

Shakespeare, William, 22 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 102 Short story, 103-5 Simile,

111

Tom Jones, 22-23, 38 Tone, 57, 68-73, 97

65

Transition, 81

Smollett, Tobias, 55

Trollope, Anthony,

Sound and

Tropes, 64-65

the Fury, The,

26-27

Twain, Mark, 68

Spatial setting, 43,

106

Spiritual setting, 39, 40-41,

42

Stereotype, 28, 29, 30, 33, 34,

39 Structure, 74-87; in short story, Style,

Ulysses,

78

Understatement, 7 Unity, 22-23, 25, 26, 31, 4445, 51, 60, 83, 100, 106

105

57-73, 84, 96-97

Subject, 9-12, 89-90

Subordination, 80-81 Subplots, 22

Sun Also 60

44

Rises, The, 38, 43

Surprise, 21,

30

Suspense, 21-22 Swift, Jonathan, 61-65, 71,

75-76, 86 Symbolism, 66-67 Syntax, 60, 67

Vanity Fair, 29, 30, 31, 36, 49, 63, 105 Values, 97 Viewpoint— see Point of view Vision, 101-2

War and

Peace, 106 Warden, The, 44 "Way You'll Never Be, A," 70-71 Wolfe, Thomas, 65

"Young Tale of Two Cities, A, 42, 71 Technique, 74-87

Goodman

Brown,"

15-22, 42, 76-80, 86-87, 97-99, 100, 105

HOW TO ANALYZE

FICTION Helps you distinguish between "story" and "plot," and between simple and complex characters

Acquaints you with the vocabulary necessary for critical discussions of fiction Explains why the author chose a certain "point of view" Shows you how to analyze style and dialogue, and how to determine the theme of a story Gives you numerous examples from Joyce,

Hemingway, Hardy,

Fitzgerald, Faulkner,

Austen, Fielding, Dickens, and other masters

>1

MONARCH

©

Copyright 1982 by Lisa Hollander Cover Design Cover Illustration by Kristin Johnson

PRESS

DDDD-S^S

$5.95

D-b71-lA7Mfci-5